Tunable Fano‐Resonant Metasurfaces on a Disposable Plastic‐Template for Multimodal and Multiplex Biosensing

Abstract

Metasurfaces are engineered nanostructured interfaces that extend the photonic behavior of natural materials, and they spur many breakthroughs in multiple fields, including quantum optics, optoelectronics, and biosensing. Recent advances in metasurface nanofabrication enable precise manipulation of light–matter interactions at subwavelength scales. However, current fabrication methods are costly and time‐consuming and have a small active area with low reproducibility due to limitations in lithography, where sensing nanosized rare biotargets requires a wide active surface area for efficient binding and detection. Here, a plastic‐templated tunable metasurface with a large active area and periodic metal–dielectric layers to excite plasmonic Fano resonance transitions providing multimodal and multiplex sensing of small biotargets, such as proteins and viruses, is introduced. The tunable Fano resonance feature of the metasurface is enabled via chemical etching steps to manage nanoperiodicity of the plastic template decorated with plasmonic layers and surrounding dielectric medium. This metasurface integrated with microfluidics further enhances the light–matter interactions over a wide sensing area, extending data collection from 3D to 4D by tracking real‐time biomolecular binding events. Overall, this work resolves cost‐ and complexity‐related large‐scale fabrication challenges and improves multilayer sensitivity of detection in biosensing applications.

Metasurfaces for biomedical applications: imaging and sensing from a nanophotonics perspective

“…Hence we have made the scope of this review paper to metasurface biosensing at the molecular and cellular levels with a focus on results that have appeared after the first introduction of the metasurface concept [8]. This section covers metasurface biosensors developed and applied for the targeted detection of antibodies and proteins [127][128][129][130][131][132][133][134][135][136], DNAs [138][139][140][141][142][143], cells [141][142][143][144][145], and cancer biomarkers [146][147][148][149]. Table 1 summarizes the performance of different metasurface Box 2 Performance factors of metasurface biosensors…”

“…Recently, a DVD-based metasurface has been reported [134], which provides the advantages of cost-effective, large detection area, and multimodal sensing. A multilayer structure of titanium (Ti), silver (Ag), and gold (Au) layers were deposited on a clean DVD surface.…”

Diagnosis for COVID-19: current status and future prospects

“…Surface plasmon resonances (SPR) based biosensors provide sensitive and real-time diagnosis of biomolecules, real-time interaction, and binding affinity at the atomic scale [ 196 ]. In the 1980s, SPR-based biosensor was first introduced to detect chemicals and biomolecules [ 197 ].…”

“…Nanotechnology-based plasmonic biosensors are convenient, simple, and easily demonstrable portable platforms to detect layer-by-layer biomolecules, proteins, and virus particles [ 196 , 206 ]. Recently, AuNPs particle-based detection showed impressive attention for colorimetric biosensing applications due to high excitation coefficients, localized surface plasmon resonance, and inherent photostability properties [ 207–209 ].…”

A review on plasmonic and metamaterial based biosensing platforms for virus detection

“…Among them, two dimensional meta-surface biosensors have been successfully employed in virus sensing. Though usage of metamaterial in biosensing is still in its early stage, already detection of viruses like HIV [ 5 ], Zika virus [ 4 ], Avian Influenza Virus [ 42 ], CPMV [ 89 ], PRD1 [ 67 ] using metamaterial based sensors have been reported and sensitivity has improved by approximately an order of magnitude [ 31 ]. Metamaterial based plasmonic biosensors have the potential to be a game changer in the field of label-free point of care virus detection.…”