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Abstract Conjugated polymers are promising material candidates for many future applications in flexible displays, organic circuits, and sensors. Their performance is strongly affected by their structural conformation including both electrical and optical anisotropy. Particularly for thin layers or close to crucial interfaces, there are few methods to track their organization and functional behaviors. Here we present a platform based on plasmonic nanogaps that can assess the chemical structure and orientation of conjugated polymers down to sub-10 nm thickness using light. We focus on a representative conjugated polymer, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT), of varying thickness (2-20 nm) while it undergoes redox in situ. This allows dynamic switching of the plasmonic gap spacer through a metal-insulator transition. Both dark-field (DF) and surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) spectra track the optical anisotropy and orientation of polymer chains close to a metallic interface. Moreover, we demonstrate how this influences both optical and redox switching for nanothick PEDOT devices.

Short-range ordered plasmonic superlattices of Au nanoparticles have tunable infrared collective plasmon-polariton resonances. The enhanced molecule-plasmon interaction approaches the vibrational strong coupling regime, enabling molecular sensing through giant infrared absorption.

Mid-infrared light absorbed in the phonon-bands of a plasmonic nanocavity substrate perturb the Raman scattering signals on sub-µs timescales, allowing development of single-photon mid-infrared detectors.

Abstract The gas sensor market is growing fast, driven by many socioeconomic and industrial factors. Mid-infrared (MIR) gas sensors offer excellent performance for an increasing number of sensing applications in healthcare, smart homes, and the automotive sector. Having access to low-cost, miniaturized, energy efficient light sources is of critical importance for the monolithic integration of MIR sensors. Here, we present an on-chip broadband thermal MIR source fabricated by combining a complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) micro-hotplate with a dielectric-encapsulated carbon nanotube (CNT) blackbody layer. The micro-hotplate was used during fabrication as a micro-reactor to facilitate high temperature (>700 $$^{\circ }$$ ∘ C) growth of the CNT layer and also for post-growth thermal annealing. We demonstrate, for the first time, stable extended operation in air of devices with a dielectric-encapsulated CNT layer at heater temperatures above 600 $$^{\circ }$$ ∘ C. The demonstrated devices exhibit almost unitary emissivity across the entire MIR spectrum, offering an ideal solution for low-cost, highly-integrated MIR spectroscopy for the Internet of Things.

Exciton-polaritons are typically formed in organic systems when the molecules are confined between metallic or dielectric mirrors. Here, the authors reveal that interactions between excitons and moderately confined photonic states within the bare organic film can also lead to polariton formation, making them the primary photoexcitation.

Tracking single molecule movements is a challenging task, but highly desired for applications and fundamental studies. Here the authors reconstruct the sub-angstrom relative movements of a molecule interacting with a metal adatom, by measuring its vibrational spectrum in a self-assembled monolayer, continuously modified by the adatom in a nanoparticle-on-mirror construct.

Dynamic restructuring of metal nanoparticle surfaces greatly influences their catalytic, electronic transport, and chemical binding functionalities. Here, the authors show that non-equilibrium atomic-scale lattice defects can be detected in nanoparticles by using nano-optics at the sub-5nm scale.

Here, the authors report the coupling between a single dye molecule and plasmonic nanocavity at room temperature. They provide insight into the statistical properties of the emission and observe non-classical emission, with photon bunching and anti-bunching regimes dependent on the excitation wavelength.

Abstract Plasmonic metafilms have been widely utilized to generate vivid colors, but making them both active and flexible simultaneously remains a great challenge. Here flexible active plasmonic metafilms constructed by printing electrochromic nanoparticles onto ultrathin metal films (

Two-dimensional materials offer the prospect of excitonic devices operating at room-temperature. Here, Kleemann et al. demonstrate that by tuning the number of WSe2 layers in a nanoparticle-on-mirror geometry, room-temperature plasmon strong-coupling can be achieved with large Rabi splittings.

Plasmons in sub-nm cavities can enable chemical processes within plasmonic hotspots. Here the authors use surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to track hot-electron-induced chemical reduction processes in aromatic molecules, thus enabling observation of redox processes at the single-molecule level.

We report on experimental investigations performed on an isolated organic mesowire waveguide resting on a glass substrate. The waveguide was made of diaminoanthraquinone (DAAQ) molecular aggregates. First, we show directional emission of light from distal ends of the DAAQ waveguide. For a given mesowire geometry, operating in passive or photoluminescence regimes, we quantified the emission angles by combining multi-wavelength Fourier-plane optical microscopy and photoluminescence micro-spectroscopy. We found light emission in the photoluminescence regime to be more directional in nature compared to the passive waveguiding regime, which was supported by three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. Second, we measured the anomalous behaviour of refractive index as a function of emission wavelength using the spectra of directionally emitted light. Third, by using spatial-filtered collection optics, we observed and quantified single-excitation dual-channel directional, active emission from DAAQ mesowire. The results discussed herein has implication not only in understanding some fundamental aspects of exciton-polariton mediated directional light emission, but also in applications such as organic optical antennas and photonic couplers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]