8th London Plasmonics Forum held at Imperial College London

The first in-person London Plasmonics Forum since the pandemic interruption was held at Imperial College London on 8th June 2022. The Forum has been held annually since 2015 to engage and connect researchers and industry who work in the ever-expanding field of Plasmonics.  

 

Professor Ian Sharp from Walter Schottky Institute, Technical University of Munich delivered the keynote lecture. In his talk entitled ‘Functional Transition Metal Oxides and Nitrides for Photoelectrochemical Energy Conversion’, Ian explained how the development of semiconductor photoelectrodes that can harvest visible light and remain stable in reactive environments remains a key sustainability challenge.

 

Using optical, electronic and x-ray characterization methods, he explained how his team investigated complex transition metal oxide and nitride semiconductors. By using non-equilibrium deposition techniques, the team were able to understand efficiency loss processes. These fundamental material studies have led to new insights, providing a basis for discovering and developing new semiconductors with a potential efficient and stable photoelectrochemical energy conversion.

 

Dr Oliver Graydon from Nature Photonics gave a talk about the trends and the future of publishing. He feels that publishing non-peer-reviewed papers instantly on places like the Arxiv sits alongside publishing peer-reviewed articles in journals, and both have an important role to play in disseminating research.

 

One of the main goals of the Forum is to shine a light on early career researchers by encouraging them to present their research by applying to deliver a talk or present a poster. 

 

Thanks to Ian Sharpe and Oliver Graydon for judging our poster competition. The winner was Vladimir Lomonosov from the University of Cambridge, who won for his poster ‘Synthesis and Catalytic Properties of Plasmonic Mg Nanoparticles decorated with Pd’

 

This year’s talks were:

Robert Jones (King’s)

The effects of Pt doping on the optical properties of Au nanoparticles

 

Matias Herran (LMU)

Engineering plasmonic bimetallic systems for optimized H2 production

 

Dr Marzia Iarossi (IIT)

Plasmonic nanopores for electro-optical sensing of molecules with surface enhanced raman spectroscopy

 

Joanna Symonowicz (Cambridge)

In-situ optical tracking of memristive switching in MoS2

 

Dr Lucy Hale (UCL)

Terahertz generation from semiconductor metasurfaces: the role of surface

nonlinearity

 

Romain Tirole (Imperial)

Epsilon-near-zero materials for time-varying physics

 

Dr Kishan Menghrajani (Exeter)

Designing open cavities for molecular strong coupling