Patterned Plasmonic Surfaces—Theory, Fabrication, and Applications in Biosensing

Abstract

Low-profile patterned plasmonic surfaces are synergized with a broad class of silicon microstructures to greatly enhance near-field nanoscale imaging, sensing, and energy harvesting coupled with far-field free-space detection. This concept has a clear impact on several key areas of interest for the MEMS community, including but not limited to ultra-compact microsystems for sensitive detection of small number of target molecules, and “surface” devices for optical data storage, micro-imaging and displaying. In this paper, we review the current state-of-the-art in plasmonic theory as well as derive design guidance for plasmonic integration with microsystems, fabrication techniques, and selected applications in biosensing, including refractive-index based label-free biosensing, plasmonic integrated lab-on-chip systems, plasmonic near-field scanning optical microscopy and plasmonics on-chip systems for cellular imaging. This paradigm enables low-profile conformal surfaces on microdevices, rather than bulk material or coatings, which provide clear advantages for physical, chemical and biological-related sensing, imaging, and light harvesting, in addition to easier realization, enhanced flexibility, and tunability.

THz Sensing With Anomalous Extraordinary Optical Transmission Hole Arrays

“…Interestingly, the high field intensity near the subwavelength apertures at the EOT resonance has been exploited for sensing applications [ 11 , 12 , 13 ] and nowadays one can find in the literature several examples of EOT biosensors [ 14 ], sensors combining nanofluidics and nanoplasmonics [ 15 ], and even sensing platforms for a direct detection and monitoring of viruses [ 16 ]. There are excellent reviews in the recent literature accounting for the latest progress in this exciting and expanding topic [ 17 , 18 , 19 , 20 ].…”

Tunable plasmonic substrates with ultrahigh Q-factor resonances

“…Fueled by the exciting opportunities offered by strong light-matter interactions, the field of plasmonics experienced an explosive growth in the last two decades, which empowered unsurpassed performance in deep-subwavelength concentration of light 1 – 3 . Significant progress has been made not only in device technologies such as plasmonic lenses 4 , 5 , plasmonic nanosensors and biosensors 6 , 7 , metamaterials and metasurfaces 8 – 10 , photovoltaics 11 , and near-field imaging 12 – 14 , but also in fundamentals of optical physics such as nonlinear optical resonances 15 , 16 , exotic constructive and destructive interferences 17 – 19 , optical beam manipulation 20 – 22 , and even optical cloaking and invisibility 23 , to name but a few. However, while offering extreme light confinement, plasmonic structures are challenging in terms of loss and greatly suffer from intrinsic absorption losses due to interband and intraband transitions in the visible and infrared regions, respectively.…”

Surface Integral Equation Formulation for the Analysis of Single and Multi-Layer Dielectric Antennas

“…In [8] SIE based on the method of moments (MoM) has been used to simulate the interaction of light and plasmonic nanostructures. SIEs are also popular in microwave regime, and have been extensively used for the analysis of periodic lossy [9] or metallic [10] structures.…”