Plasmonics is an active field that is concerned with the manipulation of light at the nanometer scale. Its physical basis is the surface plasmon resonances in metal nanostructures. Surface plasmons (SPs) are collective oscillations of free electrons in metal, and the SP resonance properties depend strongly on the material and structure. SPs consist of propagating SPs and localized SPs. Based on propagating and localized SPs, metal nanostructures show may fantastic properties, which make plasmonics have important potential applications in many fields, such as information technology, biological sensing, medical therapy, renewable energy, super-resolution imaging, etc.

In January 2008, we established the “Nano-plasmonics and its Applications” group, focused our researches on the phenomena, mechanisms, devices and applications based on SP resonances in novel metal nanostructure systems. The main research directions in the group include: nanophotonics and plasmonics, surface-enhanced spectroscopy, single molecule detection and manipulation, charge transfer at the molecule-metal interface, and nano-fabrication techniques.

At present, we have two professors, three associate professors. Our researches are supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), The Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) etc.