The surface plasmon wave is a surface wave confined at the interface between a dielectric and a metal. The excitation of the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) on a gold thin film is discussed within the Kretschmann configuration, where the coupling with the excitation light is achieved by means of a prism in total reflection. The electromagnetic principles are detailed and a simple experimental s...

To achieve a reliable formation of a surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensor with evenly distributed hot spots on a wafer scale substrate, we propose a hybrid approach combining physical nanolithography for preparing Au nanodisks and chemical Au reduction for growing them. During the chemical growth, the interstitial distance between the nanodisks decreased from 60 nm to sub-5 nm. The r...

We observe powder "droplets" forming when tapping repeatedly a horizontal flat plate initially covered with a monolayer of fine powder particles. Starting from a simple model involving both the air flow through the porous cake and avalanche properties, we set up an analytical model which satisfactorily fits the experimental results. We observe a close analogy between the governing equations of ...

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) scheme is proposed in which the local phase modulations of the coupled plasmons can interfere and yield phase-sensitive intensity modulations in the measured signal. The result is an increased traceability of the SPR shifts for biosensing applications. The main system limitation is the propagation distance of the coupled plasmon modes. This aspect is therefore ...

A photonic crystal fiber selectively filled with silver nanoparticles dispersed in polydimethylsiloxane has been numerically studied via finite elements analysis. These nanoparticles possess a localized surface plasmon resonance in the visible region which depends on the refractive index of the surrounding medium. The refractive index of polydimethylsiloxane can be thermally tuned leading to th...

We present a surface plasmon resonance imaging (SPRI) setup, based on the Kretschmann configuration, capable of simultaneously acquiring the complete spectral and angular plasmonic reflectivity response on all points of the sensing area. Several line poly(methyl methacrylate) grating regions were fabricated on a thin-film gold surface and characterized with this SPRI system. Reflectivity maps o...

INTRODUCTION The aim of this study was to assess the shaping potential of a novel nickel-titanium instrument, the self-adjusting file (SAF), in long oval root canals in distal roots in mandibular molars. METHODS Twenty mandibular molars with long oval distal root canals were selected and scanned preoperatively and postoperatively by using micro-computed tomography at an original resolution of...

We study the effect of photodiode angular response on the measurement of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in metallic thin films using the Kretschmann-Raether configuration. The photodiode signal depends not only on the light intensity but also on the incidence angle. This implies that the photodiode sensitivity changes along the SPR curve. Consequently, the measured SPR spectrum is distorted, t...

Dripping is usually associated with fluid motion, but here we describe the analogous phenomenon of a 3He crystal growing and melting under the influence of surface tension and gravity. The pinch-off of the crystal is described by a purely geometric equation of motion, viscous dissipation or inertia being negligible. In analogy to fluid pinch-off, the minimum neck radius R{n} goes to zero like a...

The inspection of specular surfaces differs significantly from the case of non-specular surfaces. In contrast to the non-specular case, the appearance of a specular surface is dominated by the reflections of the environment that are visible in it. The transfer of this observation into automated visual inspection is called deflectometry. The main principle of deflectometric surface acquisition i...