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Plasmonic and photonic technologies have attracted strong interest in the past few decades toward several interdisciplinary applications stemming from unique light-matter interactions fostered by materials at the nanoscale. The versatility of plasmonic and photonic sensors for ultrasensitive, rapid, analyte sensing without extensive sample pre-treatment steps or sophisticated optics have resulted in their strong foothold in the broad arena of biosensing. Fluorescence-based bioanalytical techniques are widely used in liquid-biopsy diagnostics applications, but require many labeled target molecules to combine their emission output to achieve a practically useful signal-to-noise ratio. Approaches capable of amplifying fluorescence signals can provide signal-to-noise sufficient for digitally counting single emitters for ultrasensitive assays that are detected with simple and inexpensive instruments. [1]. Plasmonic and nano-photonics can function in synergy to amplify fluorescence signals. By concentrating optical energy well below the diffraction limit, plasmonic nanoantenna provide spatial control over excitation light, but their quality factor (Q) is modulated by radiative and dissipative losses. Photonic crystals (PC) as dielectric microcavities have a diffraction-limited optical mode volume despite being able to generate a high Q-factor. Here, we demonstrate a plasmonic-photonic hybrid system to produce a much stronger fluorescent enhancement for digital resolution biosensing. With an optimized dielectric spacer layer, around 200 Alexa-647 fluorophores have been coated over heterometallic Ag@Au core-shell plasmonic nanostructures with minimized Ohmic losses and quenching effects [2]. The target-specific molecule capture events enabled this plasmonic fluor to attach to the PC surface, forming a Plasmonic-Photonic hybrid mode. With much stronger local field enhancement, far-field directional emission, large Purcell enhancement, and high quantum efficiency, we report a two-orders signal enhancement from PC-enhanced plasmonic-fluor (104-fold brighter than a single fluorophore). This improved signal-to-noise ratio enabled us to perform single molecule imaging even with a 10x (NA=0.2) objective lens while offering 3 orders of magnitude boost in the limit of detection of Interleukine-6 (common biomarker for cancer, inflammation, sepsis, and autoimmune disease) compared with standard immunoassays in human plasma
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Interfacing photonic crystal fiber with a metallic nanoantenna for enhanced light nanofocusing
The direct interfacing of photonic crystal fiber to a metallic nanoantenna has widespread application in nanoscale imaging, optical lithography, nanoscale lasers, quantum communication,in vivosensing, and medical surgery. We report on the fabrication of a needle-shaped plasmonic nanoantenna on the end facet of a photonic crystal fiber using electron-beam-induced evaporation of platinum. We demonstrate the coupling of light from the fiber waveguide mode to the subwavelength nanoantenna plasmonic mode focusing down to the apex of the plasmonic needle using a polarization-resolved far-field side-scatter imaging technique. Our work provides an important step toward widespread application of optical fibers in nearfield spectroscopic techniques such as tip-enhanced Raman and fluorescence microscopy, single-photon excitation and quantum sensors, nanoscale optical lithography, and lab-on-fiber devices.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1905043
- PAR ID:
- 10211979
- Publisher / Repository:
- Optical Society of America
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Photonics Research
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 2327-9125
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- Article No. 252
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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