Optical spectroscopy is routinely used to analyze chemical structures of organic molecules. However, generally the optical resolution is limited by diffraction to roughly half a wavelength that is much larger than the molecular dimension. One of the most prominent techniques to overcome this bottleneck is tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS), which allows the spatial resolution with chemical identification capability down to ~5 Å. The ability of such Angstrom-resolved spatial resolution to determine the chemical structure of unknown molecules arouse intense interests in the fields of chemistry, physics, materials, and biology. Our group is one of the pioneer groups in this exciting field. We continuously implement new optical techniques into TERS and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy in order to study the local morphology related optical properties of semiconducting small molecules, push-pull chromophores, and plasmonic metal nanostructures.
This project is located in a newly granted DFG project ‘Angular resolved optical emission from adsorbates in (sub)nanometer gap’. The tasks for the students consist of three parts:
1) The student will prepare ultrasmooth gold film and microcrystalline Au (111) thin film according to a reported protocol.
2) The student will drop-casting superspherical gold nanoparticle on these film to form plasmonic nanogaps.
3) The student will perform plasmonic-effect enhanced Raman and fluorescence spectroscopy using these plasmonic nanogaps.
There is a possibility to combine a HiWi position with a Masterarbeit. For more details, please contact Prof. Dai Zhang (dai.zhang-at-uni-tuebingen.de; Tel.: 070712977639)
