Both Bottom-up and top-down approaches are used to fabricate nanoscale objects thus expand the possibilities in terms of fabrication and integration.

Bottom-up synthesis is conducted in our group using colloidal chemistry to synthesize a variety of nanoparticles of different sizes and shapes as well as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) to fabricate 2D materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides. The particles can then be integrated in sensing units or patterned using nanoimprint lithography. Other examples include the synthesis of ultraflat nanoplates of silver and gold to be used in tip-enhanced spectroscopy as substrates.

Top-down approaches rely on UV-Vis masked-based lithography and electron beam lithography to create metastructures with a resolution better than 10 nm. Examples includes arrays of nanoholes for trapping and detecting biomaterials as well as arrays of nanotriangles integrated in microfluidics channels for online monitoring of biomolecules in fluids. Other examples using UV lithography in conjunction with the Bosch process was used to create honeycomb structures to grow neurons in a given fashion. The fabrication of these top-Down structures is performed using the Western Nanofabrication Facility, a open user facility that has all major technologies to fabricate nanoscale materials.

Selected Relevant Manuscripts

"Superimposed Arrays of Nanoprisms for Multispectral Molecular Plasmonics" , Gregory Q. Wallace, M. Tabatabaei, R.Hou, M.J. Coady, P.R. Norton, T.S. Simpson, S.M. Rosendahl, A.Merlen, and F. Lagugné-Labarthet*, ACS Photonics, 2016, 3, 1723-1732.

"Directing GPCR-Transfected Cells and Neuronal Projections with Nano-Scale Resolution", M.Tabatabaei, F. Caetano, S. Vedraine, S.Ferguson, P. Norton, F.Lagugné-Labarthet*, Biomaterials, 2013, 34, 10065-10074.

"Microfluidic channel with embedded SERS 2D platform for the aptamer detection of ochratoxin A", B.Galarreta, M. Tabatabaei, V.Guieu,* E.Peyrin, F.Lagugné-Labarthet,*, Anal. Bioanal. Chem., 2013, 405, 1613-1621.