Chemical Society Seminar: François Lagugné-Labarthet - Plasmonics for Optical Sensing: Pushing the limits of sensitivity and spatial resolution

Abstract:

The use of efficient sensing technologies appears to be a field with tremendous activity mainly due to the connectivity of sensing devices on global network (internet of things and services) enabling immediate sharing of information valuable in a variety of fields such as industrial processes, food quality control, environmental monitoring and biomedical assessment. In this context the development of optical sensing devices appears to provide advantages such as high portability (small footprint, little sample preparation) and, in ideal conditions, an excellent specificity of detection.

Our group aim at developing metamaterials interfaced with spectroscopy and optical methods to enhance the detection of a variety of materials and biomaterials using advanced nano- and micro-scales optical imaging. Specifically, plasmon-mediated enhancements are used to further facilitate i)-the increase of surface-sensitivity of spectroscopic measurements and to ii)- increase local spatial resolution of the optical measurement beyond the diffraction limit.

In this seminar, we will review several research directions led in our group including the design and fabrication of advanced surface-enhanced platforms for Raman and Infrared measurements,^1,2 development of Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to probe biological processes at a sub 10 nm scale,³ and the extension of plasmon-mediated sensing to nonlinear optical processes such as second harmonic generation.⁴

1 G. Wallace et al., Advanced Optical Materials, 2018, 6, 1701336.
2 M. Tabatabaei et al., Chemical Science, 2016, 7, 575-582.
3 M. Tabatabaei et al. ACS Photonics, 2015, 2, 752-759.
4 R. Hou et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2016, 18, 7956-7965.

Bio:

François Lagugné-Labarthet is a Professor of Chemistry at Western University since 2007. He held a Canada Research Chair in Nanoscale science and Photonics from 2008 to 2018. Prior to Western, he was a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) at the Université Bordeaux. His research themes encompass the study of the optical properties of nanoscale materials using a variety of original combinations of microscopy and optical techniques yielding nanoscale information with unprecedented sensitivity and spatial resolution. As the scientific director of the Western Nanofabrication facility, his mission is to maintain the state-of-the-art instrumentation for the fabrication and characterization of nanoscale devices, enable new fabrication techniques with better specifications and promote the open-user access to the Western Nanofabrication Facility, Ontario first open-user nanofabrication facility opened in 2004, to a variety of users from academia and industry. Since 2018, F.Lagugné-Labarthet is the Chair of NanoOntario Inc., a non-for-profit organization that represents the interests of members from academic, government, industrial, and financial sectors in the development of nanotechnologies in Ontario.