Plasmonic near fields, wherein light
is magnified and focused within nanoscale volumes, are utilized in a broad
array of technologies including optoelectronics, catalysis, and sensing. Within
nanoscale cavities such as those shown in Figure A-B to the right, increases in
temperature are expected and indeed have been demonstrated. Heat generation can
be beneficial or detrimental for a given system or technique, but in either
case it is useful to have knowledge of the local temperature. In this work,
subtle features in single-molecule surface-enhanced Raman spectra (Figure C)
have been quantified as a means of achieving thermometry at the nanometer
length scale.
