Technical Papers and Presentations

Plasmons, i.e. the collective oscillations of electrons in a metallic nano-structure, lead to strong light scattering, absorption and an enhancement of the local electromagnetic field.

In this work, the local electric-field enhancement in a system of dielectric nanoparticles placed very near to a metallic substrate is studied and discussed. Finite-element numerical simulations were used in order to understand the field-enhancement mechanism in this ‘dielectric nanoparticle-on-mirror’ system. To demonstrate the relevance of this study to real-life applications, we show an example of the use of metal-oxide nanoparticles for the direct monitoring of a photo-catalytic decomposition process.