GROUP NON LINEAR OPTICS AND INTERFACES (ONLI)
Group Leader : Prof. Pierre-François BREVET & Prof. Emmanuel BENICHOU
Investigation of structural, optical and electronic properties of metallic nanostructures and supramolecular assemblies with nonlinear optical approaches (Second Harmonic Generation).
Metallic nanostructures (gold or silver nanoparticles synthesized through wet chemistry methods or realized with e-beam lithography techniques on substrates) and supramolecular assemblies like molecular aggregates, biomolecules (amino acids, peptides or proteins) or hybrid nanomaterials formed by nanoparticles - (bio)molecules systems are studied with Second Harmonic Generation (SHG) or hyper Rayleigh Scattering (HRS, effectively an incoherent SHG process). A specific interest is devoted in particular to such systems supported on solid or liquid surfaces (air/solid, liquid/solid or air/liquid and liquid/liquid interfaces). Fundamental studies of the structure and the dynamics of these systems is performed keeping in view their potential applications (optics based instrumentation, sensing, …).