Abstract

The development of a novel concept of nanostructured material is involved in this project: the proper combination of magneto-optical (MO) and plasmonic elements to produce a magneto-plasmonic material tailored on the nanoscale. The novel magneto-plasmonic materials will offer the unique ability to control their properties in more than one way, since the magneto-optical activity will be affected by the alteration of the plasmonic characteristics and the optical response will depend on the magnetic ones. The latter puts an additional advantage over conventional materials, since the optical response can be actively tuned by means of an external agent: a magnetic field. The project has two main goals; the first is to prepare active magneto-plasmonic materials with tailored properties in the nanoscale and understanding the interactions of the magnetic properties with the plasmonic and optical ones, linked to electric charge oscillations. The second goal is to develop prototypes of applications that can benefit of this coupling. Since it is expected that the optical properties of these materials can be driven by using a magnetic field, this will allow designing and developing novel magneto-plasmonic devices. In particular, as a proof of the applicability of this concept, we will design, fabricate and test a prototype of a new kind of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor with MO elements, i.e. a surface magneto-plasmon resonance (SMPR) biosensor, comparing its performance against standard biosensors.