ORC Seminar Series

Speaker: Professor Enzo Di Fabrizio

Date: 26 November 2008

Time: 2pm

Venue: Building 46 Lecture Theatre B

Abstract:

Keywords: Raman, SERS, Focused Ion Beam, single molecule detection, plasmonic nanolens, Biophotonics. 

In recent years, there was an increasing interest on design and fabrication of nanostructures devoted to photonic applications such as photonic crystals fabrication, spectroscopy analysis, detection of single molecules and fundamental studies on well confined electromagnetic field. Different materials, fabrication techniques and applications were especially devoted to the use of plasmonic enhancement to the study of molecules of biological interest. The main task was the control of the enhancement of the local electrical field, in order to overcome the low scattering cross section of the Raman effect, when single molecule has to be detected.

In this lecture we present the fabrication of novel plasmonic nanostructures designed for Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering for single molecule detection. High sensitivity measurements of a few tens of molecules will be presented. The choice of nanolithography as fabrication techniques is due to the fact that it is now necessary to investigate, in a controllable and reproducible way the effect of 3D geometry on the generation of plasmon-polaritons on such material and devices. The structures presented were tested optically and we found significant improvement in the spectra quality and in the detection sensitivity, down to a few tens of molecules.

Biography:

Enzo Di Fabrizio is full professor of Physics at the University Magna Grecia in Catanzaro, where he teaches courses on general physics, nanotechnology and biophotonics. Moreover, he is director of the BIONEM (Bio and Nano engineering for Medicine) laboratory.

The scientific activity at BIONEM laboratory (http://bionem.unicz.it/) that Enzo Di Fabrizio coordinates spans from nanotechnology and biophotonic (including photonic crystal and plasmonic based devices) to biology. Special attention is dedicated to the in situ release of drugs for tumors care, through innovative devices based in general on nanocarriers such as nanocapsules, nanoparticles and polymers, and, in particular, on Silicon nanoporous. Additional biophotonic devices a based on the SERS effect (surface Enhanced Raman Scattering) or NEAR-INFRA (Near Field Infrared) are under development.

At TASC laboratory in Trieste, Enzo Di Fabrizio is still in charge of the LILIT laboratory (Laboratory for Interdisciplinary LIThography) of INFM (National Institute for Matter Physics, www.infm.it) and formerly, was responsible for the area of micro&nanotecnology at Elettra Synchrotron facility (www.elettra.trieste.it) . His activity on micro and nanotechnology started more than 15 years ago and includes several years of research at the center of excellence for X-ray lithography (CXrL) at University of Madison-Wisconsin,US. He has published about 200 papers on international Journals. The international activity includes several collaborations with major western and eastern countries such as the US, Japan, China and India.