Jon Camden

Research Interests

It is well known that plasmonic nanostructures are capable of harvesting light and concentrating it in the near field. This special behavior results from the collective oscillation of the conduction electrons in a metallic nanostructure, and has enabled a plethora of exciting applications such as plasmon-enhanced solar cells, photonic circuits, superlenses, chemical and biological sensing, and the detection of single molecules. Underlying many of these processes is the ability of plasmon excitation to greatly enhance electromagnetic fields at the particle surface. The Camden group is working to develop new applications of plasmonic nanostructures and to understand fundamental features of the molecule-plasmon couplings underlying these applications. Our current research efforts include: (1) Understanding the flow of plasmonic energy from nanoparticles at interfaces and into molecules, (2) Development of fast, portable, and cost-effective analytical methods for small molecules based on SERS, and (3) Exploration of surface-enhanced nonlinear spectroscopy, and (4) Direct imaging of plasmon-enhanced fields using electron microscopy.

Selected Publications

• Thimes, R. L.; Santos, A.; Chen, R.; Kaur, G.; Jensen, L.; Jenkins, D. M. and Camden, J. P. "Using Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy to Unravel the Wingtip-Dependent Orientation of N-Heterocyclic Carbenes on Gold Nanoparticles" 2023 Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters, 14 (18), pp.4219-4224. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpclett.3c00588.
• Kumar, V.; Rossi, A. W.; Lawson, Z. R.; Neal, R. D.; Hachtel, J. A.; Neretina, S.; Masiello, D. J. and Camden, J. P. "Infrared Near-Field Spectroscopy of Gold Nanotriangle Fabry-Perot Resonances" 2023 Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 127 (14), pp.6777-6784. DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcc.3c00753.
• Dominique, N. L.; Jensen, I. M.; Kaur, G.; Kotseos, C. Q.; Boggess, W. C.; Jenkins, D. M. and Camden, J. P. "Giving Gold Wings: Ultrabright and Fragmentation Free Mass Spectrometry Reporters for Barcoding, Bioconjugation Monitoring, and Data Storage" 2023 Angewandte Chemie-International Edition, 62, e202219182. DOI: 10.1002/anie.202219182.
• Kaur, G.; Thimes, R. L.; Camden, J. P. and Jenkins, D. M. "Fundamentals and Applications of N-Heterocyclic Carbene Functionalized Gold Surfaces and Nanoparticles" 2022 Chemical Communications, 58 (95), pp.13188-13197. DOI: 10.1039/d2cc05183d.
• Neal, R. D.; Lawson, Z. R.; Tuff, W. J.; Xu, K. K.; Kumar, V.; Korsa, M. T.; Zhukovskyi, M.; Rosenberger, M. R.; Adam, J.; Hachtel, J. A.; Camden, J. P.; Hughes, R. A. and Neretina, S. "Large-Area Periodic Arrays of Atomically Flat Single-Crystal Gold Nanotriangles Formed Directly on Substrate Surfaces" 2022 Small, 18 (52), 2205780. DOI: 10.1002/smll.202205780.
• Dominique, N. L.; Chen, R.; Santos, A.; Strausser, S. L.; Rauch, T.; Kotseos, C. Q.; Boggess, W. C.; Jensen, L.; Jenkins, D. M. and Camden, J. P. "Ad Aurum: Tunable Transfer of N-Heterocyclic Carbene Complexes to Gold Surfaces" 2022 Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers, 9 (23), pp.6279-6287. DOI: 10.1039/d2qi01941h.