Near-field enhanced ultraviolet resonance Raman spectroscopy using aluminum bow-tie nano-antenna

An aluminum bow-tie nano-antenna is combined with the resonance Raman effect in the deep ultraviolet to dramatically increase the sensitivity of Raman spectra to a small volume of material, such as benzene used here. We further demonstrate gradient-field Raman peaks for several strong infrared modes. We achieve a gain of [Formula: see text] in signal intensity from the near field enhancement due to the surface plasmon resonance in the aluminum nanostructure. The on-line resonance enhancement contributes another factor of several thousands, limited by the laser line width. Thus, an overall gain of hundreds of million is achieved.