USA As Represented by Secretary of the Navy

Ronald W Rendell

Banahalli R Ratna

Carissa M Soto

Ronald J Tonucci

Jeffrey R Deschamps

Joshua D Caldwell

Orest J Glembocki

Jinny Lin Liu

Jake Fontana

James Peter Long

Sharka M Prokes

Amy S Blum

Michael A Bruckman

A plasmonic grating sensor having periodic arrays of vertically aligned plasmonic nanopillars, nanowires, or both with an interparticle pitch ranging from &#x3bb;/8-2&#x3bb;, where &#x3bb; is the incident wavelength of light divided by the effective index of refraction of the sample; a coupled-plasmonic array sensor having vertically aligned periodic arrays of plasmonically coupled nanopillars, nanowires, or both with interparticle gaps sufficient to induce overlap between the plasmonic evanescent fields from neighboring nanoparticles, typically requiring edge-to-edge separations of less than 20 nm; and a plasmo-photonic array sensor having a double-resonant, periodic array of vertically aligned subarrays of 1 to 25 plasmonically coupled nanopillars, nanowires, or both where the subarrays are periodically spaced at a pitch on the order of a wavelength of light.

Three-dimensional coherent plasmonic nanowire arrays for enhancement of optical processes

A genetically modified cowpea mosaic virus (CPMV) protein capsid serves as a scaffold for metal nanoparticles, preferably gold nanospheres, of 15 nm to 35 nm, creating plasmonic nanoclusters. The self-assembled nanoclusters gave rise to a 10-fold surface-averaged enhancement of the local electromagnetic field. Other viral capsids or virus-like proteins may also serve as such scaffolds.

Metamaterial optical elements self-assembled on protein scaffolds

Protein scaffolds from tobacco mosaic virus coat protein modified to incorporate polyhistidine can bind to a metal or a dye while having improved self-assembly characteristics. The scaffold can take the form of tubes or disks, and can further be formed into dual plasmonic ring resonators. Such self-assembled structures provide useful optical properties.

Growing community of inventors

Washington, DC, United States of America

Ronald W Rendell