NER: Interaction Between Light and Nanoengineered Surfaces

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

NER: Interaction Between Light and Nanoengineered Surfaces Arizona State University The fact that the energetic transactions between atoms and molecules, objects with characteristic dimensions ranging from a fraction of a nanometer to a few nanometers, take place in the currency of light, hundreds of nanometers in wavelength, presents us with one of the great challenges of Physics today. It is a challenge of scale. The wavelength most appropriate to study nanoscale molecular processes is too large to resolve the details of their operation. Smaller wavelengths quickly become either insensitive or damaging, while Scanning Microscope approaches are limited by their inherently low throughput. This project will lay down the foundation for a next-generation infrastructure instrumentation technology for sensing, measuring, characterizing, and testing nanostructures down to the 20nm scale and beyond, in the visible spectrum. The technology is based on the manipulation and localization of light in the nanoscale through the use of photonic antennas. Preliminary theoretical analysis of these engineered structures, hundreds of nanometers across but possessing detailed features in the 10-nanometer range, has shown that they concentrate visible light into sub 20nm regions and amplify the reradiation by the illuminated objects in those regions by at least 3 orders of magnitude. Therefore they will allow the observation of functioning nanodevices in real time. Furthermore this degree of amplification would make it possible to observe weakly fluorescent molecules directly, enabling new, faster, and more sensitive molecular assay methods for DNA sequencing and detection of bio-hazards. The expected outcomes of this exploratory research project are: (1) Development of a robust theoretical analysis method for modeling the interaction between photonic antennas and molecular objects. (2) Application of this model to demonstrate the capability to observe and inspect a nanodevice (a carbon nanotube transistor). (3) Experimental demonstration of the 3000-fold amplification of molecular fluorescence signals. Success in these three areas will open the way for full development of instrumentation based on this technology