SPR surface enhanced fluorescence with a gold-coated corrugated sensor chip

摘要

Our ultimate objective is to develop a low-cost, surface-enhanced fluorescence microarray detection system for highly multiplexed bioassays based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) coupled fluorescence. For convenience we refer to this approach as SPREFE (SPR-coupled Enhanced Fluorescence Emission). Our implementation employs grating coupler sensor chips that consist of gold-coated plastic substrates with a periodic surface profile that enables resonant coupling of incident optical radiation into surface plasmons. With this architecture, emission from fluorophores suitably bound to ligands on the chip is modified in two striking ways: first, excitation is enhanced by the evanescent plasmon field, and second emission is highly directional, which can significantly improve optical collection efficiency. In this work we explore the feasibility of this approach for biodetection.