Plasmon-enhanced refractometry using silver nanowire coatings on tilted fibre Bragg gratings

A novel technique for increasing the sensitivity of tilted fibre Bragg grating (TFBG) based refractometers is presented. The TFBG sensor was coated with chemically synthesized silver nanowires ~100 nm in diameter and several micrometres in length. A 3.5-fold increase in sensor sensitivity was obtained relative to the uncoated TFBG sensor. This increase is associated with the excitation of surface plasmons by orthogonally polarized fibre cladding modes at wavelengths near 1.5 μm. Refractometric information is extracted from the sensor via the strong polarization dependence of the grating resonances using a Jones matrix analysis of the transmission spectrum of the fibre.

[1]  S. Maier,et al.  Plasmonics: Localization and guiding of electromagnetic energy in metal/dielectric structures , 2005 .

[2]  T. Erdogan.  Fiber grating spectra , 1997 .

[3]  R. Chipman,et al.  Homogeneous and inhomogeneous Jones matrices , 1994 .

[4]  E. Coronado,et al.  Resonance conditions for multipole plasmon excitations in noble metal nanorods , 2007 .

[5]  L. Novotný,et al.  Enhancement and quenching of single-molecule fluorescence. , 2006, Physical review letters.

[6]  B. Djordjević,et al.  Use of mixing rules in predicting refractive indexes and specific refractivities for some binary liquid mixtures , 1992 .

[7]  Marc Wuilpart,et al.  High resolution interrogation of tilted fiber grating SPR sensors from polarization properties measurement. , 2011, Optics express.

[8]  A. Hartstein,et al.  Enhancement of the Infrared Absorption from Molecular Monolayers with Thin Metal Overlayers , 1980 .

[9]  J. Albert,et al.  Tilted fiber Bragg grating sensors , 2013 .

[10]  Jeffrey N. Anker,et al.  Biosensing with plasmonic nanosensors. , 2008, Nature materials.

[11]  R. Jones.  A New Calculus for the Treatment of Optical SystemsI. Description and Discussion of the Calculus , 1941 .

[12]  Jacques Albert,et al.  Plasmon resonances in gold-coated tilted fiber Bragg gratings. , 2007, Optics letters.

[13]  Younan Xia,et al.  Observation of plasmon propagation, redirection, and fan-out in silver nanowires. , 2006, Nano letters.

[14]  K H Wanser,et al.  Remote polarization control for fiber-optic interferometers. , 1987, Optics letters.

[15]  A. Bottomley,et al.  Optimizing Refractive Index Sensitivity of Supported Silver Nanocube Monolayers , 2012 .

[16]  J. Albert,et al.  Self-optimized metal coatings for fiber plasmonics by electroless deposition. , 2011, Optics express.

[17]  B. Draine,et al.  Discrete-Dipole Approximation For Scattering Calculations , 1994 .

[18]  Xudong Fan,et al.  On the performance quantification of resonant refractive index sensors. , 2008, Optics express.

[19]  Yuen-Ron Shen,et al.  Surface-enhanced Second-harmonic Generation , 1981 .

[20]  R. Jones.  A New Calculus for the Treatment of Optical Systems. IV. , 1942 .

[21]  Jacques Albert,et al.  Intrinsic temperature sensitivity of tilted fiber Bragg grating based surface plasmon resonance sensors. , 2010, Optics express.

[22]  A. Hohenau,et al.  Silver nanowires as surface plasmon resonators. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[23]  Byoungho Lee,et al.  Overview of the Characteristics of Micro- and Nano-Structured Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensors , 2011, Sensors.

[24]  Ignacy Gryczynski,et al.  Enhanced Fluorescence from Fluorophores on Fractal Silver Surfaces. , 2003, The journal of physical chemistry. B.

[25]  Chad A Mirkin,et al.  Nanostructures in biodiagnostics. , 2005, Chemical reviews.

[26]  Excitation of Surface Plasmons Using Tilted Planar-Waveguide Bragg Gratings , 2011, IEEE Photonics Journal.

[27]  D. Meisel,et al.  Adsorption and surface-enhanced Raman of dyes on silver and gold sols , 1982 .

[28]  Kirk G Scheckel,et al.  Impact of environmental conditions (pH, ionic strength, and electrolyte type) on the surface charge and aggregation of silver nanoparticles suspensions. , 2010, Environmental science & technology.

[29]  Y. Shevchenko,et al.  Polarization-selective grating excitation of plasmons in cylindrical optical fibers. , 2010, Optics letters.

[30]  B. Heffner,et al.  Deterministic, analytically complete measurement of polarization-dependent transmission through optical devices , 1992, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[31]  B. Lamontagne,et al.  A Silicon-on-Insulator Photonic Wire Based Evanescent Field Sensor , 2006, IEEE Photonics Technology Letters.

[32]  D. Thomson,et al.  Optical fiber refractometer using narrowband cladding-mode resonance shifts. , 2007, Applied optics.

[33]  Yingzhou Huang,et al.  Correlation between incident and emission polarization in nanowire surface plasmon waveguides. , 2010, Nano letters.

[34]  Spatially inhomogeneous enhancement of fluorescence by a monolayer of silver nanoparticles. , 2006, Langmuir : the ACS journal of surfaces and colloids.

[35]  J. Hafner,et al.  Localized surface plasmon resonance sensors. , 2011, Chemical reviews.

[36]  Hervé Rigneault,et al.  Enhancement of single-molecule fluorescence detection in subwavelength apertures. , 2005, Physical review letters.

[37]  Marek Piliarik,et al.  High-resolution biosensor based on localized surface plasmons. , 2012, Optics express.

[38]  M. Fleischmann,et al.  Raman spectra of pyridine adsorbed at a silver electrode , 1974 .

[39]  Jacques Albert,et al.  Anomalous permittivity and plasmon resonances of copper nanoparticle conformal coatings on optical fibers , 2011 .

[40]  Improved refractive-index sensitivity of silver-nanocube monolayers on silicon films. , 2011, Chemphyschem : a European journal of chemical physics and physical chemistry.

[41]  Günter Gauglitz,et al.  Surface plasmon resonance sensors: review , 1999 .

[42]  R. Clark Jones,et al.  A New Calculus for the Treatment of Optical Systems. VII. Properties of the N-Matrices , 1948 .

[43]  T. Fukushima,et al.  Large-Area Three-Dimensional Molecular Ordering of a Polymer Brush by One-Step Processing , 2010, Science.

[44]  R. G. Freeman,et al.  Preparation and Characterization of Au Colloid Monolayers , 1995 .

[45]  Jacques Albert,et al.  A thin metal sheath lifts the EH to HE degeneracy in the cladding mode refractometric sensitivity of optical fiber sensors , 2011 .