Surface enhanced Raman scattering effect and plasmonic properties of metal nanobowls

Plasmonics is a rapidly emerging subdiscipline of nanophotonics that studies the interaction between the light and metal particles at the nanometer scale, based on the properties of both bounded/localized and radiative/propagating surface plasmon. Its deep penetration into multidisciplinary subjects makes its application widely range from surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for biomolecule and biological agents identification, detection and sensing, near-field optics and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy to electromagnetic propagation with metal-based plasmonic waveguides. In this thesis, we used pulsed laser deposition technique combined with nanosphere lithography method to fabricate the metal nanobowl structure. This method is able to accurately control several key parameters that can tune plasmonic properties of the nanobowl structure. These parameters include material species, bowl size, bowl wall thickness as well as interspacing between nearest nanobowls. This method is also flexible to fabricate multilayered nanobowls by depositing alternate target materials on polystyrene sphere arrays. The flexibility and advances of the fabrication method provide us a chance to systematically study plasmonic properties of nanobowl structure.DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (SPMS