Photonic Hypercrystals for Multi-range Biosensing Applications

Rapid detection of disease biomarkers has a decisive impact on diagnosis and subsequent treatment of patients. However, the sizes of these biomarkers are typically of the order of several nanometers, making detection of trace amounts of them extremely challenging. An optical biosensor can play a pivotal role in the early diagnosis of various diseases if it is able to localize light at nanoscale and effectively interact with nanometer scale biomarkers as a prerequisite of high sensitivity. High confinement of light at the surface of media adjacent to targeted molecules provides extremely favorable conditions for sensing biomarkers. Thus in this project we exploit the flexibility and accuracy of the highly localized photonic surface waves and guided bulk waves on novel metamaterials – hypercrystals, specifically designed for highly sensitive and specific molecular sensing, pushing sensitivity even higher than what has been achieved in a few minutes.