Contacts:
Supervisor(s):
Prof. Francesco Pineider, Dr.Guido Toci
Title of the PhD project:
Magnetoplasmonic metasurfaces for chiral sensing
Abstract of the PhD project:
Metasurfaces are planar arrays of resonant nanostructures, which strongly interact with incident light. These nanostructures are tightly packed into regular arrays, with an interparticle distance of the same order of magnitude or smaller than the wavelength of the interacting light.
There are many fields of application for this emerging technology and one of particular interest is chiral sensing.
Chirality is a property of primary importance, as biomolecules, many drugs and other compounds are chiral. Often in biological systems only one of the two enantiomers of a pair is involved in metabolic cycles, while the other is inert or even harmful. Therefore, it is of utmost interest to develop cost-effective and efficient techniques for chirality detection.
Chiral molecules interact weakly but differently with circularly polarized light and are able to rotate polarized light clockwise (RCP) or counterclockwise (LCP).
With metasurfaces, the difference in response to RCP or LCP electromagnetic field can be boosted (e.g. by beam steering or focusing at different planes) increasing the sensitivity and accuracy of detection of chiral molecules in a sample.
Furthermore, the metasurface response can be modulated through a magnetic field when the nanostructures are composed of magnetoplasmonic materials.
Therefore the aim of this PhD project is to design, fabricate and test metasurfaces with magnetoplasmonic nanostructures capable of innovating chiral sensing techniques.
Publications:
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Oral communications at conferences
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Poster communications at conferences:
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