Plasmonics, the study of how electrons behave in a metal under an electromagnetic field, requires the use of specialty coherent light sources*as a basic tool. Optical*interferometry can potentially become more important in biomedicine if only the tech**logy could be made more compact, practical, and proven useful.
Toward that end researchers at Brown University have developed a way of using plasmonics techniques without*using a coherent light source at all. This allows optical*interferometry*at the Na**scale and should lead to new Types of biomedical sensors that can do rapid wide spectrum analysis for a variety of markers.
Here’s more details about the tech**logy from Brown University:
Plasmonic interferometers Make use of the interaction between light and surface plasmon polaritons, density waves created when light energy rattles free electrons in a metal. One type of interferometer looks like a bull’s-eye structure etched into a thin layer of metal. In the center is a hole poked through the metal layer with a diameter of about 300 na**meters—about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. The hole is encircled by a ****** of etched grooves, with diameters of a few micrometers. Thousands of these bulls-eyes can be placed on a chip the size of a fingernail.
When light from an external source is shown onto the surface of an interferometer, some of the photons go through the central hole, while others are scattered by the grooves. Those scattered photons generate surface plasmons that propagate through the metal inward toward the hole, where they interact with photons passing through the hole. That creates an interference pattern in the light emitted from the hole, which can be recorded by a detector beneath the metal surface.
When a liquid is deposited on top of an interferometer, the light and the surface plasmons propagate through that liquid before they interfere with each other. That alters the interference patterns picked up by the detector depending on the chemical makeup of the liquid or compounds present in it. By using different sizes of groove rings around the hole, the interferometers can be tuned to detect the signature of specific compounds or molecules. With the ability to put many differently tuned interferometers on one chip, engineers can hypothetically Make a versatile detector.
Up to **w, all plasmonic interferometers have required the use of highly specialized external light sources that can deliver coherent light—beams in which light waves are parallel, have the same wavelength, and travel in-phase (meaning the peaks and valleys of the waves are aligned). Without coherent light sources, the interferometers can**t produce usable interference patterns. Those kinds of light sources, however, tend to be bulky, expensive, and require careful alignment and periodic recalibration to obtain a reliable Optical response.
But Pacifici and his group have come up with a way to eliminate the need for external coherent light. In the new method, fluorescent light-emitting atoms are integrated directly within the tiny hole in the center of the interferometer. An external light source is still necessary to excite the internal emitters, but it need **t be a specialized coherent source.
02-19-2016, 10:00 AM
Optical Interferometry Going Na**scale to Make New Types of Biosensors
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