Mid-infrared plasmonic biosensing with graphene

By Daniel Rodrigo, O. Limaj, D. Janner, D. Etezadi, F. J. García de Abajo, V. Pruneri, Hatice Altug. Science, 2015

1,318 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Graphene-based biosensors The mid-infrared (mid-IR) range is particularly well suited for biosensing because it encompasses the molecular vibrations that identify the biochemical building blocks of life, such as proteins, lipids, and DNA. However, the resulting optical signal is extremely weak and often requires complex techniques to enhance the biological detection. Rodrigo et al. present a graphene-based biosensor that they dynamically tuned over a broad spectral range through electrical gating. The authors selectively probed protein molecules at different mid-IR frequencies using a single device. Science, this issue p. 165 Graphene provides a platform for a tunable plasmon-based biosensor. Infrared spectroscopy is the technique of choice for chemical identification of biomolecules through their vibrational fingerprints. However, infrared light interacts poorly with nanometric-size molecules. We exploit the unique electro-optical properties of graphene to demonstrate a high-sensitivity tunable plasmonic biosensor for chemically specific label-free detection of protein monolayers. The plasmon resonance of nanostructured graphene is dynamically tuned to selectively probe the protein at different frequencies and extract its complex refractive index. Additionally, the extreme spatial light confinement in graphene—up to two orders of magnitude higher than in metals—produces an unprecedentedly high overlap with nanometric biomolecules, enabling superior sensitivity in the detection of their refractive index and vibrational fingerprints. The combination of tunable spectral selectivity and enhanced sensitivity of graphene opens exciting prospects for biosensing.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials, Materials Chemistry

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/fb239ff0e7224ca964642b465d86872338cca774

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Citations in the corpus

Polaritons in layered two-dimensional materials. (2016, background): “Graphene plasmonics has led the way in terms of demonstrating proof-of-principle device concepts such as mid-infrared optoelectronics[7], bio-sensing[8] and fingerprinting[108].”
Graphene-plasmon polaritons: From fundamental properties to potential applications (2016, background): “These extraordinary features of graphene plasmons have stimulated intense lines of investigation into both the fundamental properties of graphene plasmons [35–37] and potential applications in metamaterials [30, 38], modulators [39, 40], photodetectors [41], and sensors [42, 43].”
Broadband gate-tunable terahertz plasmons in graphene heterostructures (2017, background): “The collective oscillations of the two-dimensional correlated quasiparticles in graphene [16] naturally make for a fascinating cross-disciplinary field in graphene plasmonics [17], with applications ranging from tight-field-enhanced modulators, detectors, lasers, polarizers, to biochemical sensors [”