Integrated dual-modality microfluidic sensor for biomarker detection using lithographic plasmonic crystal.

This paper reports an integrated dual-modality microfluidic sensor chip, consisting of a patterned periodic array of nanoposts coated with gold (Au) and graphene oxide (GO), to detect target biomarker molecules in a limited sample volume. The device generates both electrochemical and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) signals from a single sensing area of Au-GO nanoposts. The Au-GO nanoposts are functionalized with specific receptor molecules, serving as a spatially well-defined nanostructured working electrode for electrochemical sensing, as well as a nanostructured plasmonic crystal for SPR-based sensing via the excitation of surface plasmon polaritons. High sensitivity of the electrochemical measurement originates from the presence of the nanoposts on the surface of the working electrode where radial diffusion of redox species occurs. Complementarily, the SPR detection allows convenient tracking of dynamic antigen-antibody interactions, to describe the association and dissociation phases occurring at the sensor surface. The soft-lithographically formed nanoposts provide high reproducibility of the sensor response to epidermal growth factor receptor (ErbB2) molecules even at a femtomolar level. Sensitivities of the electrochemical measurements to ErbB2 are found to be 20.47 µA µM-1 cm-2 in a range from 1 fM to 0.1 µM, and those of the SPR measurements to be 1.35 nm µM-1 in a range from 10 pM to 1 nM, and 0.80 nm µM-1 in a range from 1 nM to 0.1 µM. The integrated dual-modality sensor offers higher sensitivity (through higher surface area and diffusions from nanoposts for electrochemical measurements), as well as the dynamic measurements of antigen-antibody bindings (through the SPR measurement), while operating simultaneously in a same sensing area using the same sample volume.

Tape nanolithography: a rapid and simple method for fabricating flexible, wearable nanophotonic devices.

This paper describes a tape nanolithography method for the rapid and economical manufacturing of flexible, wearable nanophotonic devices. This method involves the soft lithography of a donor substrate with air-void nanopatterns, subsequent deposition of materials onto the substrate surface, followed by direct taping and peeling of the deposited materials by an adhesive tape. Without using any sophisticated techniques, the nanopatterns, which are preformed on the surface of the donor substrate, automatically emerge in the deposited materials. The nanopatterns can then be transferred to the tape surface. By leveraging the works of adhesion at the interfaces of the donor substrate-deposited material-tape assembly, this method not only demonstrates sub-hundred-nanometer resolution in the transferred nanopatterns on an area of multiple square inches but also exhibits high versatility and flexibility for configuring the shapes, dimensions, and material compositions of tape-supported nanopatterns to tune their optical properties. After the tape transfer, the materials that remain at the bottom of the air-void nanopatterns on the donor substrate exhibit shapes complementary to the transferred nanopatterns on the tape surface but maintain the same composition, thus also acting as functional nanophotonic structures. Using tape nanolithography, we demonstrate several tape-supported plasmonic, dielectric, and metallo-dielectric nanostructures, as well as several devices such as refractive index sensors, conformable plasmonic surfaces, and Fabry-Perot cavity resonators. Further, we demonstrate tape nanolithography-assisted manufacturing of a standalone plasmonic nanohole film and its transfer to unconventional substrates such as a cleaved facet and the curved side of an optical fiber.

Dual-band light absorption enhancement of monolayer graphene from surface plasmon polaritons and magnetic dipole resonances in metamaterials.

It is well known that the absorption efficiency of a suspended monolayer graphene in the optical wavelength rang is only 2.3%, which limits its optoelectronic applications. In this work, we numerically demonstrate dual-band absorption enhancement of monolayer graphene at optical frequency, with the maximum absorption efficiency reaching to about 70% under optimum conditions. The dual-band absorption enhancement arises from the excitations of surface plasmon polaritons and magnetic dipole resonances in metamaterials. The monolayer graphene is sandwiched between a periodic array of Ag nanodisks and a SiO2 spacer supported on an Ag substrate. The resonance wavelengths of two absorption bands arising from surface plasmon polaritons and magnetic dipole resonances can be easily tuned by the array period and the diameter of the Ag nanodisks, respectively. Our designed graphene light absorber may find some potential applications in optoelectronic devices, such as photodetectors.

Toroidal Dipolar Excitation in Metamaterials Consisting of Metal nanodisks and a Dielectrc Spacer on Metal Substrate.

We have investigated numerically toroidal dipolar excitation at optical frequency in metamaterials whose unit cell consists of three identical Ag nanodisks and a SiO2 spacer on Ag substrate. The near-field plasmon hybridization between individual Ag nanodisks and substrate forms three magnetic dipolar resonances, at normal incidence of plane electromagnetic waves. The strong coupling among three magnetic dipolar resonances leads to the toroidal dipolar excitation, when space-inversion symmetry is broke along the polarization direction of incident light. The influences of some geometrical parameters on the resonance frequency and the excitation strength of toroidal dipolar mode are studied in detail. The radiated power from toroidal dipole is also compared with that from conventional electric and magnetic multipoles.

Erratum: "Humidity assay for studying plant-pathogen interactions in miniature controlled discrete humidity environments with good throughput" [Biomicrofluidics 10, 034108 (2016)].

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1063/1.4950998.].

Humidity assay for studying plant-pathogen interactions in miniature controlled discrete humidity environments with good throughput.

This paper reports a highly economical and accessible approach to generate different discrete relative humidity conditions in spatially separated wells of a modified multi-well plate for humidity assay of plant-pathogen interactions with good throughput. We demonstrated that a discrete humidity gradient could be formed within a few minutes and maintained over a period of a few days inside the device. The device consisted of a freeway channel in the top layer, multiple compartmented wells in the bottom layer, a water source, and a drying agent source. The combinational effects of evaporation, diffusion, and convection were synergized to establish the stable discrete humidity gradient. The device was employed to study visible and molecular disease phenotypes of soybean in responses to infection by Phytophthora sojae, an oomycete pathogen, under a set of humidity conditions, with two near-isogenic soybean lines, Williams and Williams 82, that differ for a Phytophthora resistance gene (Rps1-k). Our result showed that at 63% relative humidity, the transcript level of the defense gene GmPR1 was at minimum in the susceptible soybean line Williams and at maximal level in the resistant line Williams 82 following P. sojae CC5C infection. In addition, we investigated the effects of environmental temperature, dimensional and geometrical parameters, and other configurational factors on the ability of the device to generate miniature humidity environments. This work represents an exploratory effort to economically and efficiently manipulate humidity environments in a space-limited device and shows a great potential to facilitate humidity assay of plant seed germination and development, pathogen growth, and plant-pathogen interactions. Since the proposed device can be easily made, modified, and operated, it is believed that this present humidity manipulation technology will benefit many laboratories in the area of seed science, plant pathology, and plant-microbe biology, where humidity is an important factor that influences plant disease infection, establishment, and development.

Graphene "microdrums" on a freestanding perforated thin membrane for high sensitivity MEMS pressure sensors.

We present a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) graphene-based pressure sensor realized by transferring a large area, few-layered graphene on a suspended silicon nitride thin membrane perforated by a periodic array of micro-through-holes. Each through-hole is covered by a circular drum-like graphene layer, namely a graphene "microdrum". The uniqueness of the sensor design is the fact that introducing the through-hole arrays into the supporting nitride membrane allows generating an increased strain in the graphene membrane over the through-hole array by local deformations of the holes under an applied differential pressure. Further reasons contributing to the increased strain in the devised sensitive membrane include larger deflection of the membrane than that of its imperforated counterpart membrane, and direct bulging of the graphene microdrum under an applied pressure. Electromechanical measurements show a gauge factor of 4.4 for the graphene membrane and a sensitivity of 2.8 × 10(-5) mbar(-1) for the pressure sensor with a good linearity over a wide pressure range. The present sensor outperforms most existing MEMS-based small footprint pressure sensors using graphene, silicon, and carbon nanotubes as sensitive materials, due to the high sensitivity.

From Flexible and Stretchable Meta-Atom to Metamaterial: A Wearable Microwave Meta-Skin with Tunable Frequency Selective and Cloaking Effects.

This paper reports a flexible and stretchable metamaterial-based "skin" or meta-skin with tunable frequency selective and cloaking effects in microwave frequency regime. The meta-skin is composed of an array of liquid metallic split ring resonators (SRRs) embedded in a stretchable elastomer. When stretched, the meta-skin performs as a tunable frequency selective surface with a wide resonance frequency tuning range. When wrapped around a curved dielectric material, the meta-skin functions as a flexible "cloaking" surface to significantly suppress scattering from the surface of the dielectric material along different directions. We studied frequency responses of multilayer meta-skins to stretching in a planar direction and to changing the spacing between neighboring layers in vertical direction. We also investigated scattering suppression effect of the meta-skin coated on a finite-length dielectric rod in free space. This meta-skin technology will benefit many electromagnetic applications, such as frequency tuning, shielding, and scattering suppression.

Tunable Optical Nanoantennas Incorporating Bowtie Nanoantenna Arrays with Stimuli-Responsive Polymer.

We report on a temperature-responsive tunable plasmonic device that incorporates coupled bowtie nanoantenna arrays (BNAs) with a submicron-thick, thermosensitive hydrogel coating. The coupled plasmonic nanoparticles provide an intrinsically higher field enhancement than conventional individual nanoparticles. The favorable scaling of plasmonic dimers at the nanometer scale and ionic diffusion at the submicron scale is leveraged to achieve strong optical resonance and rapid hydrogel response, respectively. We demonstrate that the hydrogel-coated BNAs are able to sense environmental temperature variations. The phase transition of hydrogel leads to 16.2 nm of resonant wavelength shift for the hydrogel-coated BNAs, whereas only 3 nm for the uncoated counterpart. The response time of the device to temperature variations is only 250 ms, due to the small hydrogel thickness at the submicron scale. The demonstration of the ability of the device to tune its optical resonance in response to an environmental stimulus (here, temperature) suggests a possibility of making many other tunable plasmonic devices through the incorporation of coupled plasmonic nanostructures and various environmental-responsive hydrogels.

Strategy for realizing magnetic field enhancement based on diffraction coupling of magnetic plasmon resonances in embedded metamaterials.

We have demonstrated a straightforward strategy to realize magnetic field enhancement through diffraction coupling of magnetic plasmon (MP) resonances by embedding the metamaterials consisting of a planar rectangular array of U-shaped metallic split-ring resonators (SRRs) into the substrate. Our method provides a more homogeneous dielectric background allowing stronger diffraction coupling of MP resonances among SRRs leading to strong suppression of the radiative damping. We observe that compared to the on-substrate metamaterials, the embedded ones lead to a narrow-band hybridized MP mode, which results from the interference between MP resonances in individual SRRs and an in-plane propagating collective surface mode arising from light diffraction. Associated with the excitation of this hybridized MP mode, a twenty-seven times enhancement of magnetic fields within the inner area of the SRRs is achieved as compared with the pure MP resonance. Moreover, we also found that besides the above requirement of homogeneous dielectric background, only a collective surface mode with its magnetic field of the same direction as the induced magnetic moment in the SRRs could mediate the excitation of such a hybridized MP mode.

Optical forces in twisted split-ring-resonator dimer stereometamaterials.

We numerically investigate the optical forces in stereometamaterials composed of two-dimensional arrays of two spatially stacked split ring resonators with a twisted angle. At the hybridized magnetic resonances, we obtain both attractive and repulsive relative optical forces, which can be further exploited to control the separation between the two split ring resonators. Due to the strongest inductive coupling achieved for a twist angle of 180°, an attractive relative force as high as ~1200 piconewtons is realized at illumination intensities of 50 mW/µm(2). We show that a quasi-static dipole-dipole interaction model could predict well the characteristic and magnitude of the relative optical forces. We also demonstrate that although the optical force exerted on each of the split ring resonators could be oriented in a direction opposite to the propagation wave vector, the mass center of the two resonators is always pushed away from the light source.

Multiple Fano resonances in monolayer hexagonal non-close-packed metallic shells.

In this study, we first numerically investigate the appearance and properties of multiple Fano resonances in two-dimensional hexagonal non-close-packed arrays of symmetric metallic shells. The coexistence of broad sphere-like plasmon modes formed from the near-field interaction between the individual sphere plasmons and substantially narrower void plasmon modes supported by the inner surface of the individual shell resonant over the same range of energies can produce such Fano resonances. In particular, void and sphere-like plasmon modes of different angular momentum could directly interact without the need of symmetry breaking in the structure. A cost-effective colloidal crystal templating method is utilized to prepare the arrays of the metallic shells with small openings. The effect of the symmetry breaking on the Fano resonances in metallic cup arrays is experimentally and numerically investigated. Further tunability on the Fano resonances is gained by changing the size of the inner dielectric core, hence changing the moment of the void plasmon modes and consequently the resonance frequency. By adopting the polymer dielectric core with gain materials, our study may offer realizable experimental opportunities towards subwavelength low threshold plasmonic lasing.

Effect of symmetry breaking on localized and delocalized surface plasmons in monolayer hexagonal-close-packed metallic truncated nanoshells.

We numerically study the effect of the symmetry breaking on surface plasmon (SP) modes in two-dimensional dense arrays of truncated metal nanoshells (nanocups), by investigating light transmission through the arrays. We show that localized spherelike and voidlike Mie SP modes, and delocalized Bragg-type SP modes in complete nanoshell arrays become progressively weak and finally disappear when the opening angle of nanocups is increased to tens of degrees. Under higher degree of symmetry breaking, however, the coupling between spherelike and voidlike SP modes leads to an enhancement of SP resonances even though these modes are weakly excited, due to the large optical cross section of voidlike modes. Energy variations of the hybridized mode versus the opening angle are well predicted using a plasmon standing wave model. Furthermore, disappeared Bragg-type SP modes could be re as a result of near-field coupling via hot spots around the rims of nanocups.