Plasmon rulers: The optical angstrometers

Plasmon rulers are a fascinating class of metrology devices because of their exquisite, atomic-bond-length sensitivity to distance and their transduction of signal as a simple spectroscopic measurement. They are composed of plasmon resonant nanoparticles (NPs), and hence report distance information from a very localized, nanoscale environment—be it a biologically relevant, aqueous sample reporting structural dynamics of molecules or a molecularly thin surface coating. While their development into robust metrology tools is not without challenges, evolving nanofabrication techniques suggest that plasmon rulers can function as optical “angstrometers”.

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