The “plasmon hybridization”concept,[1] shows that the plasmon resonances in complex metallic nanostructures interact and hybridize in an analogous manner as atomic wavefunctions in molecules. The insight gained from this concept provides an important conceptual foundation for the development of new plasmonic structures that can serve as substrates for surface enhanced spectroscopies, chemical and biosensing, and subwavelength plasmonic waveguiding and other applications. The talk is comprised of general overview material interspersed with a few more specialized “hot topics” such as plasmonic Fano resonances,[2] quantum plasmonics,[3] quantum plexcitonics,[4] and active plasmonic nanoantennas for enhanced light harvesting,[5] plasmon induced chemical reactions,[6] and nanoparticle enabled solar driven steam generation.[7]

[1] N.J. Halas et al., Adv. Mat. 24(2012)4842

[2] B. Lukyanchuk et al., Nature Mat. 9(2010)707

[3] R. Esteban et al., Nature Comm. 3(2012)825; A. Marinaca et al., NL12(2012)1333

[4] A. Manjavacas et al., NL 11(2011)2318; ACS Nano 6(2012)1724

[5] M. W. Knight et al., Science 332(2011)702; Z.Y. Fang et al., NL 12(2012)3808; ACS Nano 6(2012)10222; A. Sobhani et al., Nature Comm. 4(2013)1643

[6] R. Huschka et al., JACS 133(2011)12247; S. Mukherjee et al., NL 13(2013)240

[7] O. Neumann et al., ACS Nano 7(2013)42, Z.Y. Fang et al., NL 3(2013)1737