Photonic Nanosystems

Introduction

Our research focuses on fabricating optical nano-antennas and studying their interaction with single photon emitters including effects of near field excitation and emission directionality. In particular, we exploit the DNA origami technique to rationally organize metallic nanoparticles (NPs) and (bio)-molecules in well-defined geometries and stoichiometry, forming zillions of nano-antennas in parallel. This provides a playground to place optical nanocomponents with nanometer precision, permitting us to study fundamental interactions as well as developing applications in field such as sensing and super-resolution microscopy. We use various optical techniques such as fluorescence time-resolved confocal and widefield microscopies together with dark-field.

DNA Origami

The DNA Origami technique was developed in 2006 by Prof. Paul Rothemund at Caltech, USA (click here for original paper). In a nutshell, this technique is based on “folding” a long single-stranded DNA sequence with the aid of shorter single-strands into a predesigned shape typically with dimensions in the hundreds of nanometers. To date, a plethora of different structures were fabricated in several labs around the world demonstrating the design flexibility of this technique. In particular, we are interested in using the DNA origami as a breadboard or lego where different species such as metallic nanoparticles of different materials and shapes and single photon emitters (like for example fluorophores and quantum dots) can be positioned with nanometer precision and stoichiometric control. I have recently written a perspective article discussing the use of DNA origami for nanophotonics together with Professors Liu, Jungmann and Kuzyk (ACS Photonics Review).