Hyperbolic metamaterials-based plasmonic biosensor for fluid biopsy with single molecule sensitivity

Abstract

-Plasmonic sensors are one of the most powerful optical biosensors, which can be used for the detection of small numbers of molecules at ultra-low concentrations. However, the detection of dilute analytes of low molecular weight (<500 Da) is still a challenging task using currently available plasmonic biosensors. Here, we demonstrate the detection of both lower and heavier molecular weight biomolecules close to single molecule level using a novel plasmonic biosensor platform based on hyperbolic metamaterials. We show experimentally the extraordinary spectral and angular sensitivities of the biosensor platform, from visible to near infrared (NIR) wavelengths, by exciting the bulk plasmon polaritons associated with hyperbolic metamaterials.

Hyperbolic Metamaterials and Metasurfaces: Fundamentals and Applications

“…However, high sensing properties of the nanowire‐based metamaterials relies on the bulk Kretschmann prism configuration, which is not suitable for point‐of‐care sensing application owing to the affiliated bulky structure. To overcome this drawback, miniaturized plasmonic biosensor platforms based on metal/dielectric multilayer HMMs are proposed based on both wavelength modulation scheme and angular modulation sensing scheme, as shown in Figure c,d, which exhibit extremely high sensitivity from visible to near‐infrared wavelength range. The extremely high sensitivity of this HMM biosensor makes it be able to detect small biological molecules (244 Da) at picomole concentrations.…”

“…Another hyperbolic chiral‐sculptured thin film structure as a highly sensitive sensor is also theoretically investigated . In the angular modulation sensing scheme, the bulk sensitivity of this hyperbolic plasmonic sensor is up to 6000° per refractive index units of the infiltrating fluid.…”

“…Compared with other optical metamaterials, like chiral and split ring resonator–based metamaterials, HMMs have advantages of relative ease of fabrication at optical frequencies, broadband nonresonant and 3D bulk responses, and flexible wavelength tunability. As a result, HMMs have attracted widespread interest and become a good multifunctional platform for many exotic applications, such as optical negative refraction and light beam steering, subdiffraction‐limited imaging and nanolithography, spontaneous and thermal emission engineering, ultrasensitive optical, biological, and chemical sensing, omnidirectional and broadband optical absorption …”

Оптические Эффекты В Магнитных Гиперболических Метаматериалах

“…Кроме того, в гиперболических средах к настоящему времени экспериментально обнаружены и теоретически объяснены такие эффекты как отрицательная рефракция [4,5], усиление спонтанного излучения [6,7] и рамановского рассеяния [8], преобразование ближнего поля объекта (излучаемого или рассеиваемого) в изображение в дальнем поле [9]. Оптика гиперболических сред сейчас находится на пике популярности исследований, что связано с широкими возможностями их применения в нанофотонике, биосенсорике [10,11], построении изображений [12] и создании волноводов, обладающих рядом уникальных свойств [13,14].…”

Modeling and analysis of hyperbolic metamaterials for controlling the spontaneous emission rate and efficiency of quantum emitters

“…The impressive degree-of-freedom allowed by the manipulation of the medium's effective response (εeff and μeff) continues to attract a great deal of attention to the metamaterials field, particularly in applications such as antenna designs [26]- [28], invisibility cloaks [10], [11], [29], [30], lenses [9], biosensors [7], [31]- [33], imaging [34]- [36], control of radiation emission [37]- [40], just to cite a few. The increased performance of these applications is due to the ability of individually manipulating the metamaterials parameters ε and μ, from positive to negative values.…”