Exploiting Surface Plasmon Scattering on Optical Fibers

摘要

For decades Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) has been one of the corner stones of label free biosensing with a wide range of architectures including optical fiber based SPR. Traditionally, the resonance is monitored through reflectivity measurements at a single wavelength as a function of the incident angle in a standard Kretschmann configuration, or transmission of broadband light through an optical fiber. In both cases, SPR is inferred through optical losses. An alternative approach is to use SPR scattering induced by rough metallic coatings, enabling to turn an intrinsically non-radiative process into a radiative one. As a result, the SPR signal corresponding to the resonance can be seen as light at specific wavelengths being re-emitted by the rough metallic coating. Here, we present results we have achieved using SPR scattering as an alternative approach for optical fiber based plasmonic sensors. Although the use of a rough metallic coating induces some inherent limitations, such as a lower resolution, the architectural advantages and simplicity of the approach offer additional opportunities, such as multiplexing and self-referencing, which are not possible otherwise with a single fiber SPR sensor. A way to overcome the lower resolution that involves the use of microstructured optical fibers, as well as a new perspective on a complementary application, such as Metal Enhanced Fluorescence, which greatly benefits from SPR scattering, will be presented.