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Title: Porous photonic crystal external cavity laser biosensor

Journal Article · · Applied Physics Letters
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4961107· OSTI ID:22590539
 [1]; ;  [2];  [1]
  1. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)
  2. Department of Chemistry, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois 61801 (United States)

We report the design, fabrication, and testing of a photonic crystal (PC) biosensor structure that incorporates a porous high refractive index TiO{sub 2} dielectric film that enables immobilization of capture proteins within an enhanced surface-area volume that spatially overlaps with the regions of resonant electromagnetic fields where biomolecular binding can produce the greatest shifts in photonic crystal resonant wavelength. Despite the nanoscale porosity of the sensor structure, the PC slab exhibits narrowband and high efficiency resonant reflection, enabling the structure to serve as a wavelength-tunable element of an external cavity laser. In the context of sensing small molecule interactions with much larger immobilized proteins, we demonstrate that the porous structure provides 3.7× larger biosensor signals than an equivalent nonporous structure, while the external cavity laser (ECL) detection method provides capability for sensing picometer-scale shifts in the PC resonant wavelength caused by small molecule binding. The porous ECL achieves a record high figure of merit for label-free optical biosensors.

OSTI ID:
22590539
Journal Information:
Applied Physics Letters, Vol. 109, Issue 7; Other Information: (c) 2016 Author(s); Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0003-6951
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English