Metallic nanostructures and the way in which they interact with light give rise to surface plasmons (SPs), and this is an area of much research, having applications in fields such as chemical and biological sensing, optoelectronics, and photovoltaics.  SPs are collective oscillations of electrons that are can be excited near the metallic surfaces and can be intense, exhibiting enhanced electric field intensities with respect to incident light.  We present research that specifically examines SPs behavior in periodic arrays of gold elliptical 'nanowells'  for applications in surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). To model the interactions of light with our arrays, we use the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, a technique that solves Maxwell's curl equations for the electric and magnetic fields. Using extensive 3D FDTD simulations, we considered the effect of elliptical nanowell parameters such as aspect ratio, periodicity, well depth, and metal thickness and show a nearly 80x increase in the SERS response over the cylindrical nanoposts previously reported.

In silico optimization of elliptical nanowells SERS substrates

243rd National Meeting (2012)

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