Chemically addressing high curvatures at the nanoscale to optimize light-matter interactions – CARICATURES

Light-matter interactions at room-temperature are fundamentally limited by electron-phonon interactions. While a single quantum emitter at cryogenic temperatures can interact with ~50% of incoming photons, this value is reduced by 7 orders of magnitude at room temperature. Plasmonic resonators have shown amazing promise to enhance these interactions and render the exceptional properties of quantum systems (single photon emission or strong nonlinearities) accessible at room temperature; in particular through strong coupling regimes. However, first experimental realizations suffer from major drawbacks, in particular low reproducibility. In project CARICATURES, we propose to address these issues by overcoming one of the major hurdles in the surface chemistry of nanostructures: functionalizing specifically the area of highest curvature in anisotropic particles. We will use DNA origamis to position a single emitter between the tip of a nanocube and another cube or a mirror.