Plasmonic Nanoparticle-Based Biodiagnostics

Plasmonics deals with understanding and manipulating the interaction between light and matter at a scale that is significantly smaller than the wavelength of light (e.g., metal nanoparticles), and chemical nanoplasmonics is mainly about the study and use of nanoscale chemistry for advancing plasmonics and the use of plasmonics to address key issues and challenges in chemistry and other related fields. Designing, synthesizing and controlling metal nanostructures with a superhigh precision for a large number of structures are the keys to the reliable and widespread use of plasmonic nanostructures in chemistry, materials science, optics, nanoscience, biotechnology and medicine. Here, I will share the design, synthetic strategies and characterization results of molecularly tunable and structurally reproducible plasmonic nanostructures including metal nanogap structures, multi-component metal nanoparticles and gold nanocatenanes with strong, controllable and quantifiable plasmonic signals (e.g., quantitative surface-enhanced Raman scattering). I will then show their potential in addressing some of important challenges in plasmonics, biosensing, bioimaging and medical diagnostics, and discuss how these new plasmonic materials and platforms can lead us to new breakthroughs in nanochemistry, next-generation disease diagnostics, molecular computing and nanomachines/nanorobotics.

Speaker: Jwa-Min Nam, Seoul National University