Conference Agenda

In this presentation, I will explain how a quantitative phase microscopy, named cross-grating wavefront sensing, can benefit the field of thermoplasmonics, and more generally of nano-optics. I will show how this versatile microscopy technique can image temperature distribution around plasmonic nanoparticles under illumination for applications in physics, chemistry and biology, and measure the optical and photothermal properties of nanoparticles and 2D materials.

We extend gigahertz imaging to an investigation of the vibrational modes of a phononic crystal cavity. Using excited phonon wave vectors in all directions, we implement an ultrafast technique to probe the phonon confinement in two spatial dimensions of a hexagonal cavity in a honeycomb-lattice phononic crystal formed in a microscopic crystalline silicon slab. We thereby demonstrate the confinement of phononic modes in the phononic-crystal band gap by comparison with numerical simulations. This work should stimulate analogous studies on smaller length scales in photonic crystals and in thermal engineering.

Hyperspectral mapping at the chemical finger printing spectral range of 4–20 micron was carried out for dielectric nanolayers of metal-insulator-metal metamaterials (MIM) patterns of 1–2.5micron period (sub-wavelength). Overlay images taken at different orientation angles and subsequent baseline compensation are shown to be critically important for the interpretation of chemical mapping results and reduction of spurious artefacts. Light field enhancement in the 60-nm-thick polyimide (in MIM) was responsible for strong absorption at the characteristic polyimide bands. Strong absorbance at narrow IR bands can be used as a thermal emitter.