Research

Formation of nanoscale buckles can be observed when silver nanowires were deposited onto prestrained PDMS substrates. The buckled nanowires exhibit unique optical properties, such as interruption of scattered photons and emission of photons from subwavelength structure. These nanobuckles may have great potentials for nanoopto devices and functional materials for chemical detection.

We develop new type of plasmonic nanomaterials that with a great potential for the substrates with strong activity of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). For example, we recently synthesized gold nanostars using a seed-mediated method. Our results showed that have a better SERS performance as compared to normal gold nanoparticles.

We are interested in developing novel anti-counterfeiting labels which are based on new types of functional materials, including but not limited to fluorescent materials, SERS-active materials, and other composite materials.