Functional nanostructured plasmonic materials

Plasmonic crystals fabricated with precisely controlled arrays of subwavelength metal nanostructures provide a promising platform for sensing and imaging of surface binding events with micrometer spatial resolution over large areas. Soft nanoimprint lithography provides a robust, cost-effective method for producing highly uniform plasmonic crystals of this type with predictable optical properties. The tunable multimode plasmonic resonances of these crystals and their ability for integration into lab-on-a-chip microfluidic systems can both be harnessed to achieve exceptionally high analytical sensitivities down to submonolayer levels using even a common optical microscope, circumventing numerous technical limitations of more conventional surface plasmon resonance techniques. In this article, we highlight some recent advances in this field with an emphasis on the fabrication and characterization of these integrated devices and their demonstrated applications.