Stabilization of Copper-Based Biochips with Alumina for Biosensing Application.

Surface plasmon resonance devices typically rely on the use of gold-coated surfaces, but the use of more abundant metals is desirable for the long-term development of plasmonic biochips. As a substitute for gold, thin copper films have been deposited on glass coverslips by thermal evaporation. As expected, these films immersed in a water solution initially exhibit an intense plasmonic resonance comparable to gold.

Sensitivity Enhancement of Hybrid Two-Dimensional Nanomaterials-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor.

In this work, we designed structures based on copper nanosubstrate with graphene and two-dimensional transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDC) in order to achieve an ultrasensitive surface plasmon resonance biosensor. This system contains seven components: SF11 triangular prism, BK-7 glass, Chromium (Cr) adhesion layer, thin copper film, layers of one of the types of transition metal dichalcogenides: MoS, MoSe, WS or WSe (defined as MX), graphene, sensing layer with biomolecular analyte. Copper was chosen as a plasmonic material because it has a higher conductivity than gold which is commonly used in plasmonic sensors.

Transition from surface phonon-polariton to surface phonon-plasmon-polariton by thermal injection of free carriers.

Surface phonon-polariton, surface plasmon-polariton, and surface phonon-plasmon-polariton are evanescent electromagnetic waves confined to the surfaces of different classes of materials, which gives each of them particular characteristics suitable for diverse applications. Natural or forced injection of free carriers in a dielectric may change the surface phonon-polariton into a surface phonon-plasmon-polariton. Understanding this effect provides an insight into the fundamental physics of surface electromagnetic waves on dielectrics and offers tools that can be used to develop new technologies.

Multi-Layer Reflectivity Calculation Based Meta-Modeling of the Phase Mapping Function for Highly Reproducible Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensing.

Phase-sensitive surface plasmon resonance biosensors are known for their high sensitivity. One of the technology bottle-necks of such sensors is that the phase sensorgram, when measured at fixed angle set-up, can lead to low reproducibility as the signal conveys multiple data. Leveraging the sensitivity, while securing satisfying reproducibility, is therefore is an underdiscussed key issue.

Optical density of states near planar ENZ materials.

We study the local density of optical states (LDOS) for lossy dielectric substrates whose electric permittivity has a vanishing real part, approaching zero from the positive side of the real axis. A criterion for evaluating the threshold height above (below) which radiative (non-radiative) processes dominate for a dipole emitter is established. We focus on the case of a vertical dipole above the -near-zero (ENZ) substrate and show that, in the lossless case, complete LDOS cancellation originates from radiative modes in its near field.