Surface-Enhanced Infrared Absorption: Pushing the Frontier for On-Chip Gas Sensing

Abstract

Surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) is capable of identifying molecular fingerprints by resonant detection of infrared vibrational modes through the coupling with plasmonic modes of metallic nanostructures. However, SEIRA for on-chip gas sensing is still not very successful due to the intrinsically weak light-matter interaction between photons and gas molecules and the technical challenges in accumulating sufficient gas species in the vicinity of the spatially localized enhanced electric field, namely, the "hot-spots", generated through plasmonics. In this paper, we present a suspended silicon nitride (SiN) nanomembrane device by integrating plasmonic nanopatch gold antennas with metal-organic framework (MOF), which can largely adsorb carbon dioxide (CO) through its nanoporous structure. Unlike conventional SEIRA sensing relying on highly localized hot-spots of plasmonic nanoantennas or nanoparticles, the device reported in this paper engineered the coupled surface plasmon polaritons in the metal-SiN and metal-MOF interfaces to achieve strong optical field enhancement across the entire MOF film. We successfully demonstrated on-chip gas sensing of CO with more than 1800× enhancement factors by combining the concentration effect from the 2.7 μm MOF thin film and the optical field enhancement of the plasmonic nanopatch antennas.

Metal–Organic Framework Thin Films: Fabrication, Modification, and Patterning

“…The controllable synthesis showed a linear growth rate of ZIF-8 TFs of 100 nm/coating (30 min/cycle) and presented a thickness-dependent color-changing property that was interesting in optics. The DC deposition strategy is used extensively to fabricate various MOF-TFs that are of interest in electronics and optics [16,43,[121][122][123][124].…”

“…Nowadays, MOFs are available in various structures, such as nanocrystals (NCs) [27], nanospheres [28], nanosheets [29], needles [30], hierarchical monoliths [31], thin films (TFs) [32], membranes [33], and glasses [34][35][36]. Among these structures, MOF-TFs are drawing increasing attention due to their tremendous potential in the development of nanotechnology-enabling applications, such as optics [37], photonics [38], electronics [39], catalytic coatings [40], sensing [41][42][43][44], solar cell [45], battery [46], and supercapacitor [44]. One thing to notice is that MOF-TFs cannot be differentiated from MOF membranes by their chemical composition or by their selection of substrates.…”

Metasurface Color Filters Using Aluminum and Lithium Niobate Configurations

“…Recently, the research progresses of metamaterials have advanced toward the realization of tunable metasurfaces that enables real-time control over their geometrical and optical properties, thus creating exceptional opportunities in the field of actively tunable metamaterials. They have been reported to span the visible [1][2][3][4][5][6], infrared (IR) [7][8][9][10][11][12], and terahertz (THz) [12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21] spectral ranges. As the unique optical properties in metasurfaces rely on the interaction between incident light and the nanostructure, desirable properties can be achieved by properly tailoring the shape, size, and composition of structure.…”

“…As the unique optical properties in metasurfaces rely on the interaction between incident light and the nanostructure, desirable properties can be achieved by properly tailoring the shape, size, and composition of structure. Metasurfaces have enabled manipulation of near-field entities thereby allowing reconfiguration of intriguing features like magnetic response [1,22], near-perfect absorption [14,15,23], transparency [17,19], phase engineering [18,20,21,24], MIR sensing and thermal imaging [10], resonance modulation [9] for many types of filters [1][2][3][4][5], and sensors [6][7][8][12][13][14] applications.…”

Enhancing Galvanic Replacement in Plasmonic Hollow Nanoparticles: Understanding the Role of the Speciation of Metal Ion Precursors

“…Because of these capabilities, the field of plasmonics has grown rapidly and has recently been identified as a potentially pervasive technology capable of achieving unprecedented optical functionalities . For instance, the intense fields near the metal surface and the possibility for energy transfer with a spectroscopically active compound are being used to enhance the performance of IR, Raman and fluorescence‐based strategies in sensing and high contrast imaging applications; energetic hot carriers are being harnessed to catalyze chemical reactions or to convert and store energy; chemical and physical transformations triggered by plasmon‐induced localized heating are finding applications as diverse as photothermal therapy and light‐activated actuators and nanoswitches; and so on.…”