Ann. Phys. (Berlin) 524, No. 11, A155 (2012) / DOI 10.1002/andp.201200753
Editorial
EDITORIAL
Plasmonic sensors Dear Colleagues, We are very pleased to present you this topical issue on Plasmonic Sensors. Arguably one of the success stories of plasmonics, biosensing exploiting the high-field confinement offered by surface plasmon modes keeps going from strength to strength, decades after the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering and initial applications of localized surface plasmon resonance sensing. The continued fasciation and importance of plasmon-assisted sensing is in no small part due to modern nanofabrication schemes, allowing us to tailor and structure optical fields on the subwavelength scale, and hence create optimized conditions for the interaction with molecular species. We begin this topical issue with a prime example of how nanofabri-
cation enables the widening of the design space of nanoplasmonic sensors, with a review article on nanostructures for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (A. Gopalakrishnan et al., p. 619). A second review discusses both the underlying concepts and implementations of phasesensitive surface plasmon resonance biosensors, a technique that has reached maturity over the last 15 years (Y. H. Huang et al., p. 637). The primary research articles included can be loosely divided into work reporting advances in sensing techniques and methodologies, from waveguide-based surface plasmon-polariton sensing, fiberoptic sensors, to comparisons between localized surface plasmon resonance with conventional Fabry– Pérot-type sensors, and into work primarily dealing with materialsrelated aspects, focusing particu-
larly on how surface quality and controlled surface modifications affect sensing performance. The issue closes with a Rapid Research Letter on laser-assisted substrate generation for surfaceenhanced Raman scattering. We hope that the articles included provide a good and stimulating snapshot of the variety of research in this fascinating area of modern plasmonics.
Stefan Maier received his university education at the Technical University of Munich and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He graduated with an MS and PhD in Applied Physics (2000, 2003) from Caltech, and after a short postdoc became a Lecturer and then Reader at the University of Bath (UK). He moved to Imperial College in 2007. He is co-director of the College’s Centre for Plasmonics and Metamaterials.
Mikael Käll graduated from Chalmers University of Technology in 1995 after PhD work on Raman spectroscopy of high-Tc superconductors. After a post doc in Denmark and biology studies at Göteborg University, he started to work on single molecule SERS effects in 1998. He is now professor in physics and head of the Division of Bionanophotonics at the Department of Applied Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg.
Liberato Manna received both his MSc (1996) and PhD (2001) in Chemistry from the University of Bari, Italy. After working as a postdoc at UC Berkeley until 2003, he moved back to Italy, as scientist at the National Nanotechnology Lab in Lecce. In 2009 he moved to the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia in Genova as head of the Nanochemistry Department. Since 2010 he is also professor at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience at TU Delft (Netherlands).
© 2012 by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
Stefan Maier Imperial College London, UK, E-mail:
[email protected] Mikael Käll Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden, E-mail:
[email protected] Liberato Manna, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova, Italy, E-mail:
[email protected]
A155
