Magneto-optic Surface Plasmon Resonance

Magneto-plasmonic functionalities using dielectric, ferromagnetic/ferrimagnetic, and the semiconductor material is a rapidly growing field with great potential for practical applications. It involves the interaction of magneto-optic materials such as nanoparticles, magnetic metamaterial, photonic crystals and grating structures on magnetic media, and ferromagnetic and ferrimagnetic multilayer structures with the optical radiation and external magnetic fields at various wavelengths ranging from visible to infra-red.

Depending on the dimension of the structure and interaction with the optical radiation, the field is classified as localized surface plasmon (LSP) or propagating surface plasmon (PSP). The LSP structures include varying sizes (holes, patterns, nanoparticles) each ranging from 1 to 100 nm, structures smaller than the wavelength of the optical radiation.

On the other hand, PSP structures include more extended sizes of LSP structures where the dimension of the structure is larger than the wavelength of the optical radiation. When tuned, both types of nanostructures demonstrate unique optical, electrical, and magnetic/magneto-optic properties that are in direct relationship to their size, shape, and surface chemistry. Because of these properties, magneto-optical materials are being extensively investigated for a possible application in medicine for sensing/diagnosing and treating diseases and with the potential to expand to other areas such as environmental monitoring, surveying, imaging, and many more to come. For more on our research, interested readers are referred to the web link below and the references cited therein:

Magnetoplasmonics, Emerging Biomedical Technologies and Beyond. J Nanomed Res 3(3): 00059.

DOI: 10.15406/jnmr.2016.03.00059