Electromagnetically Active Nanocomposite Metamaterial Biosensors

Title: Electromagnetically active nanocomposite metamaterial biosensors

Abstract Body: Novel active biosensor platforms offer both sensitive detection and real-time characterization of biological targets in genomics, proteomics, and biomedical theranostic applications.  An example is quantized photon-exciton coupling which generates distance-dependent Forster resonance energy transfer in spectroscopic molecular rulers.  We have recently distinguished quantized plasmon polarizabilities which induce extraordinary opto-electronic coupling with phase-dependent photon diffraction in ordered metalloceramic nanocomposite metamaterials.  Metamaterials exhibit tunable electromagnetic functionality -- from simple iridescence in butterfly wings to radiofrequency cloaking -- due to coherent interference from multidimensional structuring of suitable condensed-matter composites.  Sensitivity enhancement from tunable electromagnetic coupling in metamaterials appears more than 10-fold relative to sensitivities in conventional planar or nanoparticle sensors based on surface plasmon resonance.  Our lab has hybridized ‘top-down' lithography and ‘bottom-up' metallization approaches to fabricate nanocomposite metamaterial biosensor platforms.  Using scanning electron microscopy and microspectroscopy we show that prototype devices based on these platforms exhibit opto-electronic sensitivities consistent with model predictions.   These advances in modeling, fabrication, and prototype analysis are important milestones toward developing electromagnetically active nanocomposite metamaterials as biosensor platforms for next-generation disease diagnosis and personalized medicine.