Plasmonics:
Plasmonics is the study of the interaction between electromagnetic field and free electrons in a metal. Free electrons in the metal can be excited by the electric component of light to have collective oscillations. However, due to the Ohmic loss and electron-core interactions, loss are inevitable for the plasmon oscillation, which is usually detrimental to most plasmonic devices. Meanwhile, the absorption of light can be enhanced greatly in the metal by proper designing metal patterns for SP excitation. [Melosh Research Group/Stanford University]
Noted in the biography of Lauren Otto, Ph.D. in EE, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, CSE, University of Minnesota:
Lauren completed a portion of her doctoral research at the Molecular Foundry, which is a nanoscience research facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (a DOE supported national laboratory). There she focused on developing materials called synthetic metals (for instance, a conductive ceramic like titanium nitride) using ALD-based techniques, which allows for the coating of arbitrary surfaces conformally one atomic layer at a time. For Lauren, her goal was to create a materials platform that was well-suited for industrial use and could enable mass-produced plasmonic devices such as the nanoantennas in HAMR hard drive heads.
