Fabrication and Characterization of Confined Structures for Sensing and Lasing Applications

Huge confinement of light over micro and nano structures is finding various applications in the field of photonics. in this letter the results obtained over two different kinds of confined structures viz., (i) Metallo-Dielectric colloidal structures (MDCS), obtained by immobilization of metallic gold (Au) nanoparticles on the dielectric silica network of inverse silica opal matrix and (ii) Rare-earth activated silica-hafnia film coated silica micro resonator is presented in detail. The structural, optical and spectroscopic assessments of these systems are giving an evidence to have applications in the field of sensing and lasing. Preliminary results on MDCS used as surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) substrate shows an evidence that an increase of the Raman signal with respect to that observed for other metallic and dielectric structures.