| Nanotechnologies are used to study matter at the nanometric scale and enable new technological & scientific possibilities. Since structural properties at the nanometric scale also define their macroscopic behaviors, it is now clear that materials nano-engineering can provide a unique control over their physical properties unavailable otherwise.; In this work, template-assisted optical-material nano-engineering is used to enable novel material properties & devices. A self-assembled nanopore template is used to nanopattern silicon, which in-turn leads to all-silicon laser action at cryogenic temperatures through isoelectronic trapping and to enhanced room-temperature light emission via dislocation-mediated phonon localization.; Liquid-crystal molecules nanoconfined in these nanopores also show unique physical behaviors predicted more than 20 years ago but never observed, for they require the right balance between surface and volume effects enabled by the nanopore template geometry.; Nano-engineering leads to new nanophotonic behaviors as much as light helps understanding nanoscaled materials. Light-matter interactions are used to detect the presence of nanoconfined DNA through surface-plasmon induced fluorescence. Optical-phonon spectroscopy also allows to probe the structural properties of multi-walled carbon nanotubes and exotic carbon nanotructures. Finally, optical spectroscopy is used to study both the plasmonic light-matter interactions in periodic gold nanodot arrays created using the nanopore template as a metal-evaporation mask and the structural properties of zinc-oxide semiconductor nanorods grown using these gold nanodot arrays as catalyst, demonstrating how controlled growth conditions and post-growth treatments alter their light-emission properties. |
