Time: 16:00 hrs

Location: Room E

Light and Metal: Surface Plasmon Devices and Circuitry

T.W. Ebbesen, ISIS, Strasbourg University and CNRS, 8 rue Gaspard Monge, 67000 Strasbourg, France

Materials structured on the nanometer scale can lead to improved and sometimes surprising properties. Metals are no exception to this rule. Metal particles for instance display colours which vary with their size. The colour results from the coupling of light with the free electrons of the metal particle to form surface plasmons. With modern nanofabrication techniques it is possible to tailor the structure of metals and thereby to control the properties of surface plasmons opening many new possibilities for photonic devices, sensors and miniature optical circuits. This potential of nanostructured metals will be illustrated by the recent progress in the field [1-3].

1. Barnes, Dereux and Ebbesen, Nature 424, 824 (2003); 2. Genet and Ebbesen, Nature 445, 39 (2007); 3. Ebbesen, Genet et Bozhevolnyi, Physics Today (mai 2008).