Biosensing and Nanoplasmonics
Plasmonic behaviour of nanomaterials
Nanomaterials
Behavioural studies
The study of the plasmonic behaviour of nanomaterials has attracted a great deal of scientific interest in recent years. Much of the work is focused on the field of biomedicine, mainly because of the properties of plasmonic nanoparticles, which allow them to function as very effective biomedical image intensifiers.
The optical behaviour of metals is well described by classical electrodynamics. In this way, research in plasmonic systems can draw on all the previous knowledge developed in other areas where electromagnetic simulation has always played an important role.
EM3W Team
Contributions made
Recently, researchers from the SC7-B group of the University of Vigo, in cooperation with the Computational Electromagnetics group (CEM) of the University of Extremadura (UEx), hereafter EM3W, have successfully applied their most advanced electromagnetic simulation codes (M3 code) to the resolution of plasmonic problems; overcoming, among others, problems such as the high multiscale level intrinsic in the nature of these problems, the use of evanescent excitations by electron beam for the induction of plasmonic resonances or the emission of light (by means of electron microscopy and spectroscopy), allowing a very significant increase in the spatial resolution.
With these contributions, the EM3W team has placed itself in a privileged position in terms of simulation capabilities in this field, making relevant scientific advances in the modelling of real plasmonic problems under laser and electronic excitation and in the application of these tools to the simulation of advanced nanomaterials for sensing and imaging applications in biomedicine.
Cooperation
The investigations
The EM3W team’s research in this field began in 2014 and has been funded by a series of projects in competitive calls of the Ministry of Science and Innovation, always marked by close collaborations with renowned research groups in the fields of nanoparticle application, biosensing and biomedicine. Among others, the cooperation with the BioNanoPlasmonics Laboratory at the CIC biomaGUNE, directed by Prof. Luis M. Liz-Marzán; with the Nanophotonics Theory group at the ICFO directed by Prof. Dr. Javier Garcia de Abajo; or with Professors Jorge Pérez-Juste and Isabel Pastoriza-Santos of the Colloid Chemistry Group at the University of Vigo.
In all these investigations/collaborations, the main contribution of the EM3W team has been the adaptation of the M3 simulator to this type of problems and materials. The result has been that the M3 simulation code has broken all existing limits in the field of simulation of these materials by being able, as had never been done before, to rigorously simulate the behaviour of colloids or crystals with millions of nanoparticles. The advances achieved in this field have been the subject of highly relevant publications in the most prestigious journals.
