Photonic crystal enhanced fluorescence using a quartz substrate to reduce limits of detection.

Content Provider	Europe PMC
Author	Pokhriyal, Anusha Lu, Meng Chaudhery, Vikram Huang, Cheng-Sheng Schulz, Stephen Cunningham, Brian T.
Copyright Year	2010
Abstract	A Photonic Crystal (PC) surface fabricated upon a quartz substrate using nanoimprint lithography has been demonstrated to enhance light emission from fluorescent molecules in close proximity to the PC surface. Quartz was selected for its low autofluorescence characteristics compared to polymer-based PCs, improving the detection sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of PC Enhanced Fluorescence (PCEF). Nanoimprint lithography enables economical fabrication of the subwavelength PCEF surface structure over entire 1x3 in2 quartz slides. The demonstrated PCEF surface supports a transverse magnetic (TM) resonant mode at a wavelength of λ = 632.8 nm and an incident angle of θ = 11°, which amplifies the electric field magnitude experienced by surface-bound fluorophores. Meanwhile, another TM mode at a wavelength of λ = 690 nm and incident angle of θ = 0° efficiently directs the fluorescent emission toward the detection optics. An enhancement factor as high as 7500 × was achieved for the detection of LD-700 dye spin-coated upon the PC, compared to detecting the same material on an unpatterned glass surface. The detection of spotted Alexa-647 labeled polypeptide on the PC exhibits a 330 × SNR improvement. Using dose-response characterization of deposited fluorophore-tagged protein spots, the PCEF surface demonstrated a 140 × lower limit of detection compared to a conventional glass substrate.
Related Links	https://europepmc.org/backend/ptpmcrender.fcgi?accid=PMC3408906&blobtype=pdf
Journal	Optics Express [Opt Express]
Volume Number	18
PubMed Central reference number	PMC3408906
Issue Number	24
PubMed reference number	21164826
e-ISSN	10944087
DOI	10.1364/oe.18.024793
Language	English
Publisher	Optical Society of America
Publisher Date	2010-11-01
Access Restriction	Open
Rights License	This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which permits download and redistribution, provided that the original work is properly cited. This license restricts the article from being modified or used commercially. ©2010 Optical Society of America
Subject Keyword	(050.5298) Photonic crystal (180.2520) Fluorescence microscopy (110.3960) Nanolithography
Content Type	Text
Resource Type	Article
Subject	Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics