Gold Nanodisks Plasmonic Array for Hydrogen Sensing at Low Temperature.

We present a novel plasmonic hydrogen sensor consisting of an array of gold nanodisks produced by lithography. The size, height, and spacing of the disks were optimized using finite element simulation to generate a sharp localized surface plasmon resonance peak in the near-infrared wavelength region. The reported results show the possibility of developing an optical gas sensors-based bare Au nanostructures operating at a low temperature.

Resonance properties of thick plasmonic split ring resonators for sensing applications.

We investigate in detail the optical response of dense split ring resonator (SRR) arrays as a function of their thickness, for normally impinging light in the VIS-NIR spectral range. We find that, for sufficiently tall SRRs, several vertical Fabry-Perot resonances can be excited, which may interact with the well-known horizontal SRR resonant paths. Furthermore, we analyze the possibility to exploit these nanostructures to detect bio-chemical quantities. In particular, we find that the coexistence of vertical and horizontal resonances yields an increased sensitivity. Well ordered, large arrays of thick SRRs are obtained by exploiting a fabrication process based on X-Ray Lithography. A very good agreement is found between numerical and measured transmittances. A preliminary detection test evidences the potential of this geometry as a sensing platform.

Label-free efficient and accurate detection of cystic fibrosis causing mutations using an azimuthally rotated GC-SPR platform.

Plasmonic nanosensors are candidates for the development of new sensors with low detection limits, high sensitivity, and specificity for target detection: these characteristics are of critical importance in the screening of mutations responsible for inherited diseases. In this work, we focused our study on the detection of some of the most frequent mutations responsible for cystic fibrosis (CF) among the Italian population. For the detection of the CF mutations we adopted a recently developed and highly sensitive Grating Coupled-Surface Plasmon Resonance (GC-SPR) enhanced spectroscopy method for label-free molecular identification exploiting a conical illumination configuration. Gold sinusoidal gratings functionalized with heterobifunctional PEG were used as sensing surfaces, and the specific biodetection was achieved through the coupling with DNA hairpin probes designed for single nucleotide discrimination. Such substrates were used to test unlabeled PCR amplified homozygous wild type (wt) and heterozygous samples, deriving from clinical samples, for the screened mutations. Hybridization conditions were optimized to obtain the maximum discrimination ratio (DR) between the homozygous wild type and the heterozygous samples. SPR signals obtained from hybridizing wild type and heterozygous samples show DRs able to identify univocally the correct genotypes, as confirmed by fluorescence microarray experiments run in parallel. Furthermore, SPR genotyping was not impaired in samples containing unrelated DNA, allowing the platform to be used for the concomitant discrimination of several alleles also scalable for a high throughput screening setting.

Light absorption enhancement in heterostructure organic solar cells through the integration of 1-D plasmonic gratings.

The integration of a plasmonic lamellar grating in a heterostructure organic solar cell as a light trapping mechanism is investigated with numerical Finite Elements simulations. A global optimization of all the geometric parameters has been performed. The obtained wide-band enhancement in optical absorption is correlated with both the propagating and the localized plasmonic modes of the structure, which have been identified and characterized in detail.