ABSTRACT

The essential physics of plasmonics is beautifully reviewed by Maier, starting from Maxwell's equations and the criteria for the existence of a plasmon propagating at the interface between a dielectric and a conductor, evanescently confined in the perpendicular direction. Localized surface plasmons are nonpropagating excitations of metal nanostructures' conduction electrons when coupled to an incident electromagnetic field. The traditional materials for plasmonics are metals, with dielectrics. Graphene offers a substantially different platform for the creation of optoelectronic devices and systems. Perhaps the most important difference to the above approaches is that the bandgap structure of graphene can be varied through doping, and this opens up a variety of different plasmonic schemes. Photoresist technology limits the ultimate resolution in nano-lithography, so much effort is given to making improvements where possible, such as described by Fourkas. Polymer and biological techniques represent an entirely different class of approaches to the nanoparticle precision-array challenge.