Nanophotonic waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy of biological submonolayers
Abstract
Characterizing a monolayer of biological molecules has been a major challenge. We demonstrate nanophotonic wave-guide enhanced Raman spectroscopy (NWERS) of monolayers in the near-infrared region, enabling real-time measurements of the hybridization of DNA strands and the density of sub-monolayers of biotin-streptavidin complex immobilized on top of a photonics chip. NWERS is based on enhanced evanescent excitation and collection of spontaneous Raman scattering near nanophotonic waveguides, which for a one centimeter silicon nitride waveguide delivers a signal that is more than four orders of magnitude higher in comparison to a confocal Raman microscope. The reduced acquisition time and specificity of the signal allows for a quantitative and real-time characterization of surface species, hitherto not possible using Raman spectroscopy. NWERS provides a direct analytic tool for monolayer research and also opens a route to compact microscope-less lab-on-a-chip devices with integrated sources, spectrometers and detectors fabricated using a mass-producible CMOS technology platform.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1608.08002,
title = {Nanophotonic waveguide enhanced Raman spectroscopy of biological submonolayers},
author = {Ashim Dhakal and Pieter C. Wuytens and Frédéric Peyskens and Karolien Jans and Nicolas Le Thomas and Roel Baets},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1608.08002},
year = {2016}
}