Nowadays, plasmonics covers a wide scientific and technological field at the frontier between the optics, the electronics, the solid state physics and the chemistry and with various applications in the enhanced spectroscopies, the nano-optics, the sensors, the nano-medicine, the energy, the environment... The plasmon is defined as the collective oscillation of the electron cloud inside a metal. It is related with electronic properties of a material (excitation of the electron) as well as with its optical properties. It can be excited by light either in volume, at the interface between a dielectric and a metal, or inside a nanostructure. In this latter case, the excitation of electrons through the plasmon can induce several processes: (i) a large field enhancement around the nanostructure (nano-optics), (ii) local heating through the transfer of the electron energy to the phonons (thermo-plasmonics), (iii) “hot electrons” creation that can react with molecules (molecular plasmonics) or that can be transferred from the nanostructure to another materials (plasmonic electronics). Such effects can be exploited to influence the local environment as, for instance, the initiation of chemical reactions. Thus, the exploitation of the plasmon has permitted the development of the plasmonics as a single scientific domain.
Our objective is to exploit the whole set of Plasmonics processes (field enhancement, heat generation and hot electron excitation) to identify, detect and modify biological objects (biomolecules, cells...) or biological processes and mechanisms in order to answer to specific biomedical issues as the disease diagnosis, the cancer treatment or the enhancement of some biochemical reactions.
Thus, we want to especially focus on three different research topics:
1. The observation of biomolecular interactions to enhance the detection of biomarkers and the disease diagnosis.
2. The design of a nanoheater to locally and specifically destroy some cells and to treat cancer by hyperthermia
3. Generation of hot electrons to enhance biochemical reactions