2D nanomaterials enhanced surface plasmon resonance for sensing applications

Surface plasmon resonance sensors are commonly used an effective tool for real-time monitoring biomolecular interactions. The sensing mechanism is based on the evanescent field perturbation at the metallic sensing... [ view full abstract ]

Surface plasmon resonance sensors are commonly used an effective tool for real-time monitoring biomolecular interactions. The sensing mechanism is based on the evanescent field perturbation at the metallic sensing substrate induced by the binding of chemical and biological molecules. Molecular binding interactions could be measured from the signal of reflected light, under the condition that the surface plasmon resonance is excited by the incident light. In this talk, we will present the use of hybrid 2D nanomaterials-based metasurface nanostructure as an enhanced sensing substrate. The thickness of the plasmonic sensing substrate is tuned in an atomic scale and optimized to improve the sensing capability. Here, both a sharp phase signal change and phase-related Goos-Hänchen signal shift were achieved due to the strong resonance at the surface of the sensing film. The enhanced plasmonic sensitivities of 2D nanostructures were systematically investigated. It is worth noting that the tunability of atomic layer led to the sensing substrate optimized with a narrow scale < 1 nm. Through a precise engineering of the metasurface substrates, 3 orders of magnitude improvement of the sensitivity were demonstrated compared to the one with pure gold sensing substrate. This hybrid 2D nanomaterial-based metasurfaces would provide a good opportunity for developing portable theranostic devices in clinical applications.