sNOm

The sNOm Laboratory focusses on the investigation of the fundamental processes and the applications in the fields of:

Plasmonics and Nano-photonics

Specifically, we are dedicated to the development of plasmonic and nano-photonics platforms for:

  • Light steering and modulation at the nanoscale
  • Frequency mixing at the nanoscale
  • Molecular sensing

sNOm Activities

Light steering and modulation at the nanoscale

(click on the title to download a relevant pubblication on the subject)

Frequency mixing at the nanoscale

Molecular Sensing

sNOm Facilities

Optical setups:

  • a state of the art home-made confocal microscopes with diffraction-limited resolution capability to investigated nanostructures and nanostructured materials;
  • an optical goniometer to investigate the angular dependence of the optical response of planar samples upon collimated light illumination.

Light Sources:
The optical setups can be coupled with ultrafast lasers delivering laser pulses with time duration of 150 fs with emission from the visible (VIS) to the near-infrared (NIR) and short wave infrared (SWIR) to investigate the nonlinear optical properties of nanostructured materials. In particular, we operate:

  • an ultrafast solid state oscillator (Chamaleon, Coherent Inc.) delivering 150 fs pulses which are tunable in the VIS-NIR (680-1080nm) wavelength range;
  • an ultrafast solid state oscillator (Origami, OneFive/NKT) delivering 160 fs pulses at 1550 nm wavelength (SWIR range).

The set of light sources it complemented by a variety of laser diodes operating in continuous wave from 400 nm to 1550 nm.

Detection systems:
The sNOm lab is equipped with several detection systems

  • Fast-response and amplified photodiodes working in the VIS-NIR range;
  • Single photon avalanche detectors (SPAD) working both in the VIS-NIR (silicon-based) and in the SWIR (InGaAs-based) region of the electromagnetic spectrum for extreme low light measurements;
  • A VIS-NIR (400nm-1100nm) spectrometer coupled to a cooled charged coupled device (CCD) camera and a SWIR (900 nm-2200 nm) spectrometer coupled to a cooled charged couple device (CCD) camera for the acquisition of spectra in the extreme low-light regime.