Applications of Hybrid Metal‐Dielectric Nanostructures: State of the Art

Enhancing the light-matter interactions is important for many different applications like sensing, surface enhanced spectroscopies, solar energy harvesting, and quantum effects such as nonlinear frequency generation or spontaneous stimulated emission. Hybrid metal-dielectric nanostructures have shown extraordinary performance in this respect, demonstrating their superiority with respect to bare metallic high refractive index dielectric nanostructures. Such hybrid can combine best of two worlds: strong confinement electromagnetic by structures scattering directivity low losses ones. In review, following a general overview properties nanostructures, some most relevant including directional scattering, Raman spectroscopy, absorption enhancement, fluorescence dot emission effects, well lasing, are summarized.