Welcome to my web page, here you can find information about my interests and background. I am currently a Research Assistant Professor at Prof. R. A. Lukaszew's "Thin films and nanostructures" laboratory at the College of William and Mary.

At present, I am interested in the design, fabrication and characterization of thin films, multilayers, and nanostructures with superconducting and magnetic properties. In particular I have focused on:

•  Plasmonics is an aggressive area of research because of the promise of new materials capable of remarkable optical properties and the possibility of confining and guiding light for computing and sensing applications. I have been particularly interested in magneto-plasmonic materials, i.e. materials in which the excitation of surface plasmons significantly enhance the magneto-optical activity. I have worked on the modeling, preparation and characterization of magneto-plasmonic materials of interest for increasing the sensitivity of biosensors. In particular, I have worked on materials in the form of thin films, nanostructures and nanoparticles for this purpose.

 Fig. 1. Scheme of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) in Ag-Co core-shell nanoparticles. The incident light causes the displacement of the conduction electron cloud relative to the nuclei giving rise to intense and confined electromagnetic fields at the resonance wavelength. L.Wang et al. Nano Letters 11 (3), 1237-1240 (2011).

 Scheme of Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance (LSPR) in core-shell nanoparticles. suspended in refractive-index-matching oil (n 1.5018) between two glass slides

     Fig. 2. Surface Plasmons can be excited by illuminating a grating at a certain angle. In this work [C. Clavero et al. Optics Letters 35, 1559 (2010) ] Au/Co films deposited on polycarbonate gratings demonstrated to exhibit high quality Surface Plasmons highly sensitive to external magnetic fields. 

•  Proximity effects are important and can affect many thin film magnetic applications, in particular, multilayers with giant magneto-resistance. Therefore I have investigated such effects in thin films using synchrotron radiation techniques such as X-ray Resonant Magnetic Scattering (XRMS) and neutron techniques as Polarized Neutron Reflectometry (PRN), both at National Laboratories. Recently I have carried out experiments using Spin Polarized Scanning Tunneling Microscopy (SP-STM) at Argonne National Laboratory.

Fig.3 Topography (left) and spin polarized STM magnetic contrast (right) for V films deposited on antiferromagnetic Cr(001). The magnetic contrast shows antiferromagnetic coupling between the polarized V islands and the antiferromagnetic Cr(001) substrate [C. Clavero et al. Phys. Rev. B 82, 085445 (2010)]. 

Cesar Clavero, César Clavero Pérez, Cesar Clavero Perez