Ultrasensitive and label-free molecular-level detection enabled by light phase control in magnetoplasmonic nanoantennas

Nicolò Maccaferri, Keith E. Gregorczyk, Thales V. A. G. de Oliveira, Mikko Kataja, Sebastiaan van Dijken, Zhaleh Pirzadeh, Alexandre Dmitriev, Johan Åkerman, Mato Knez and Paolo Vavassori ()
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Nicolò Maccaferri: CIC nanoGUNE
Keith E. Gregorczyk: CIC nanoGUNE
Thales V. A. G. de Oliveira: CIC nanoGUNE
Mikko Kataja: NanoSpin, Aalto University School of Science
Sebastiaan van Dijken: NanoSpin, Aalto University School of Science
Zhaleh Pirzadeh: Chalmers University of Technology
Alexandre Dmitriev: Chalmers University of Technology
Johan Åkerman: Materials Physics, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Electrum 229, 16440 Kista, Sweden
Mato Knez: CIC nanoGUNE
Paolo Vavassori: CIC nanoGUNE

Nature Communications, 2015, vol. 6, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Systems allowing label-free molecular detection are expected to have enormous impact on biochemical sciences. Research focuses on materials and technologies based on exploiting localized surface plasmon resonances in metallic nanostructures. The reason for this focused attention is their suitability for single-molecule sensing, arising from intrinsically nanoscopic sensing volume and the high sensitivity to the local environment. Here we propose an alternative route, which enables radically improved sensitivity compared with recently reported plasmon-based sensors. Such high sensitivity is achieved by exploiting the control of the phase of light in magnetoplasmonic nanoantennas. We demonstrate a manifold improvement of refractometric sensing figure-of-merit. Most remarkably, we show a raw surface sensitivity (that is, without applying fitting procedures) of two orders of magnitude higher than the current values reported for nanoplasmonic sensors. Such sensitivity corresponds to a mass of ~0.8 ag per nanoantenna of polyamide-6.6 (n=1.51), which is representative for a large variety of polymers, peptides and proteins.

Date: 2015
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms7150

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