Levente Tapasztó (CER Institute of Technical Physics and Materials Science)

Strongly increased light-matter interaction mediated by graphene

Abstract: Light and matter can interact in various ways. An intriguing type of light-matter interaction occurs when incoming light induces a collective oscillation of the electron system, giving rise to a new type of quasi-particles, named plasmons. Only specific, so-called plasmonically active materials allow such type of light-matter interaction. Graphene is a single atom thick crystal consisting of a honeycomb lattice of carbon atoms, characterized by a unique electronic structure. It is an intriguing question, whether light can couple to such a unique electron system, and if so, what the properties of the resulting graphene plasmons will be? We have developed a novel nanoengineering technique to render graphene plasmonically active in the visible-frequency range. The strong local fields of grpahene plasmons, extending only a couple of tens of nanometres outwards from the surface of graphene, can increase the interaction of nearby molecules with light, by several orders of magnitude. We have exploited the particularly strong electric near-fields of visible frequency graphene plasmons to enable a much more sensitive optical detection of specific molecules.

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