Top articles
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France Bioimaging Open Day
On May 25th, we will present several demonstration experiments about manipulating light with optics. This year, we have a special celebration with the bicentenary of Augustin Fresnel's theory of diffraction, and we will be redoing the historical Fresnel...
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Temperature Measurement in Plasmonic Nanoapertures Used for Optical Trapping
Optical absorption in plasmonic structures lead to a local temperature increase. It was long assumed that in the case of nanoapertures, the extended metal layer was acting as an efficient heat sink to mitigate the warming. However, the reality is that...
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Extending Single-Molecule Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) Range beyond 10 Nanometers in Zero-Mode Waveguides
Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is widely used as a molecular ruler to monitor biomolecular conformations and interactions dynamics. However, an intrinsic limitation in FRET is that the signal decreases very rapidly with the dye to dye distance,...
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Preventing Aluminum Photocorrosion for Ultraviolet Plasmonics
Ultraviolet plasmonics is a burgeoning scientific field where the strong molecular absorption bands in the UV range are combined with the intense electromagnetic fields of plasmonic nanostructures. This powerful combination is highly promising to promote...
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Deep UV plasmonic enhancement of single protein autofluorescence in zero-mode waveguides
Detecting proteins in the UV range is appealing to take advantage of their natural tryptophan fluorescence and rule out all the issues related with external fluorescence labelling. However, proteins feature a much lower fluorescence brightness than conventional...
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Nanophotonics and Micro/Nano Optics International Conference 2020
Chaired by Patrice Genevet and co-chaired by Jerome Wenger, the Nanophotonics and Micro/Nano Optics International Conference 2020 is proudly featuring an outstanding list of 12 outstanding invited speakers. The conference attendance is limited to 250...
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Reproducing Fresnel-Arago experiment to illustrate the main concepts of physical optics
Following our video series on Fresnel-Arago experiment's modern version, we have relased an arXiv paper describing how to mount the setup, prepare the sample and perform a selection of experiments. Many concepts of physical optics can be visually illustrated...
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Adhesion Layer Influence on Controlling the Local Temperature in Plasmonic Gold Nanoholes
Adhesion layers of chromium or titanium are widely used in plasmonics to ensure a proper adhesion between a gold film and a glass substrate. However, very little is known about their influence on the thermal response. As a result, the adhesion layer is...
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No virus will stop the ERC
Organic chemistry is gaining an increasing interest in the optics lab these days. According to WHO, here is a simple hanrub sanitizer recipe: For a 1L solution, mix 833mL ethanol 96%, 4.2mL hydrogen peroxide 30%, 1.5mL glycerol and 161mL pure water. Shake...
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[ArmadaCrew] Emergency evacuation order
[Arcadia - Queen Emeraldas Revenge - Shadow Princess - Ebbesen's blade crew member] Immediate evacuation order by emergency exits. This is not an exercise. Retreat with calm and discipline. ---- Gentlemen, it's been an honour and a privilege to be your...
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Ultraviolet Photostability Improvement for Autofluorescence Correlation Spectroscopy on Label-Free Proteins
The natural autofluorescence of proteins in the UV is appealing to get the detailed information from single molecule data without requiring a potentially disturbing external fluorescent label. However, proteins feature significantly lower autofluorescence...
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Long-Range Single-Molecule Förster Resonance Energy Transfer between Alexa Dyes in Zero-Mode Waveguides
Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is widely used as a molecular ruler to monitor biomolecular conformations and interactions dynamics, but FRET is generally limited to distances below 10 nm. Last year, we showed that zero-mode waveguides (ZMW)...
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The Armada is on fly again
Soon our flag will flutter again over the Sea of Nanos. Wed. May 13th 2pm CEST: Ebbesen's Blade is on fly again. Thu. May 14th 3pm CEST: Shadow Princess took off and is fully operational. Fri. May 15th 12am CEST: Arcadia hashin! Thu. May 28th 4pm CEST:...
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Nanoscale control of smFRET by a scanning photonic nanoantenna
Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) governs energy exchanges at the nanoscale and can be used to accurately measure intra- and inter-molecular distances with sub-nm accuracy. While photonic nanoantennas have been shown to modify FRET, most of the...
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CMOS-compatible all-dielectric metalens for improving pixel photodetector arrays
The ability to design light concentrators directly integrated on a chip is an issue in many applications of optics. Published recently in APL Photonics, we have developed a CMOS compatible metasurface lens based on the index profiles derived from the...
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Aleksandr Barulin successfully defended his PhD
After a 3-year endeavour, Aleksandr Barulin defended his PhD on Dec 4th 2020. Thesis committee: - Thomas Ebbesen, ISIS, Université de Strasbourg, France, President - Niek van Hulst, ICFO-Institut de Ciences Fotoniques, Spain, Reviewer - Christian Eggeling,...
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Quantifying the Role of the Surfactant and the Thermophoretic Force in Plasmonic Nano-optical Trapping
Plasmonic nano-optical trapping has revolutionized the use of optical tweezers, and a lot of attention has been devoted to the optical gradient force. However, the metal absorbs part of the incident light, leading to a temperature gradient responsible...
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Reproducing the Fresnel-Arago experiment to illustrate physical optics
Now published in Photoniques , the journal of the French Optical Society, international (english) edition: Is there a bright spot in the shadow of an opaque disk? Nearly 200 years ago, Augustin Fresnel and François Arago’s remarkable answer to this question...
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Jerome Wenger among the world's top 2% of researchers in optics and nanosciences
An international study entitled "updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators" recently measured the impact of scientific citations. 160,000 scientists -corresponding to the world's top 2% in their respective fields- have...
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Plasmonic nano-optical trap stiffness measurements and design optimization
Plasmonic nano-optical tweezers offers unprecedented abilities to manipulate nano-objects. However, measuring the trap stiffness at nanoscale dimensions remains a technical challenge, and as a consequence, very few reports have explored plasmonic designs...
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Complete Electromagnetic Dyadic Green Function Characterization in a Complex Environment—Resonant Dipole-Dipole Interaction and Cooperative Effects
The Green function plays a central role in wave propagation, as it describes the response of a system to an arbitrary impulse. However, measuring it experimentally is very challenging since it needs to be measured in both amplitude and phase with deep...
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Zero-mode waveguides can be made better with optimized rectangle shapes
Zero-mode waveguide metal nanoapertures are receiving a large interest owing to their ability to confine light at the nanoscale and enhance the fluorescence emission from single molecules. However, the interest for more advanced geometries beyond the...
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4th Summer School On Plasmonics SSOP4, Sept. 2017, Porquerolles
Submissions and registrations for the 4th Summer School On Plasmonics (SSOP4) are now open. The school will be held on September 3-8, 2017, in Porquerolles, one of the most beautiful island of the Mediterranean sea. Please find more information at http:www.fresnel.fr/ssop4/...
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Purcell radiative rate enhancement of label-free proteins with ultraviolet aluminum plasmonics
Ultraviolet plasmonics has attracted recently a growing attention owing to the possibility to take advantage of increased light-matter interaction in the UV range. However, the core question of demonstrating the capacity of UV plasmonic structures to...
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Single Photon Source from a Nanoantenna-Trapped Single Quantum Dot
Plasmonics can be used to enhance the emission properties of single quantum nano-objects and use them as bright ultrafast single photon sources. However, plasmonic trapping single quantum objects has remained highly challenging so far. In a recent Nano...
