This book discusses the recent advances in the area of near-field Raman scattering, mainly focusing on tip-enhanced and surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Some of the key features covered here are the optical structuring and manipulations, single molecule sensitivity, analysis of single-walled carbon nanotubes, and analytic applications in chemistry, biology and material sciences. This book also discusses the plasmonic materials for better enhancement, and optical antennas. Further, near-field microscopy based on second harmonic generation is also discussed. Chapters have been written by some...

Current developments in optical technologies are being directed toward nanoscale devices with subwavelength dimensions, in which photons are manipulated on the nanoscale. Although light is clearly the fastest means to send information to and from the nanoscale, there is a fundamental incompatibility between light at the microscale and devices and processes at the nanoscale. Nanostructured metals which support surface plasmon modes can concentrate electromagnetic (EM) fields to a small fraction of a wavelength while enhancing local field strengths by several orders of magnitude. For this...