Resumen: Following a brief historic introduction to plasmons, their useful properties and early applications, we highlight some of the key advances in the field over the past decade. We then discuss new directions for the future, such as the use of 2D materials and strong coupling phenomena, which are likely to shape the field over the next ten years. For centuries, metals were employed in optical applications only as mirrors and gratings. New vistas opened up in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the discovery of surface-enhanced Raman scattering and the use of surface plasmon (SP) resonances for sensing. However, it was not until the 1990s, with the appearance of accurate and reliable nanofabrication techniques, that plasmonics blossomed1. Initially, the attention focused on the exploitation of SPs (collective electronic oscillations at the surface of metals) for sensing, subwavelength waveguiding and extraordinary optical transmission2. Since then, the scientific and technological interest in SPs has expanded. Correspondingly, as illustrated in Fig. 1, the number of publications in the field has increased in a steady exponential fashion for more than two decades, and the momentum driving plasmonics research looks set to continue (...) Idioma: Inglés DOI: 10.1038/nphoton.2016.258 Año: 2017 Publicado en: Nature Photonics 11, 1 (2017), 8-10 ISSN: 1749-4885 Factor impacto JCR: 32.521 (2017) Categ. JCR: PHYSICS, APPLIED rank: 2 / 146 = 0.014 (2017) - Q1 - T1 Categ. JCR: OPTICS rank: 1 / 94 = 0.011 (2017) - Q1 - T1 Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 16.462 - Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials (Q1) - Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics (Q1)