Local electric field enhancement and polarization effects in a surface-enhanced Raman scattering fiber sensor with chessboard nanostructure

Hybrid structure polarization-maintaining hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber with anti-resonant tubes and silicon layers

A novel-hybrid structure polarization-maintaining 19-cell hollow-core photonic bandgap fiber (HC-PBGF) is proposed. Robust single-mode characteristic is achieved by introducing six anti-resonant tubes into the core of 19-cell HC-PBGF. A high birefringence at the level of 10^-3 is achieved by adding silicon layers into the y-direction tubes. The higher-order mode extinction ratio (HOMER) is greater than 4.71 × 10⁷, and the high birefringence can be improved to 5 × 10^-3. In the waveband from 1530 nm to 1595 nm, the single-mode, high birefringence performance can be effectively maintained even under a tight bending radius of 5 mm.

MoS2-Based Substrates for Surface-Enhanced Raman Scattering: Fundamentals, Progress and Perspective

Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), as an important tool for interface research, occupies a place in the field of molecular detection and analysis due to its extremely high detection sensitivity and fingerprint characteristics. Substantial efforts have been put into the improvement of the enhancement factor (EF) by way of modifying SERS substrates. Recently, MoS2 has emerged as one of the most promising substrates for SERS, which is also exploited as a complementary platform on the conventional metal SERS substrates to optimize the properties. In this minireview, the fundamentals of MoS2-related SERS are first explicated. Then, the synthesis, advances and applications of MoS2-based substrates are illustrated with special emphasis on their practical applications in food safety, biomedical sensing and environmental monitoring, together with the corresponding challenges. This review is expected to arouse broad interest in nonplasmonic MoS2-related materials along with their mechanisms, and to promote the development of SERS studies.

High birefringence, single-polarization, low loss hollow-core anti-resonant fibers

We present a novel hollow-core anti-resonant fiber (HC-ARF) with a cladding ring, two nested resonant tubes and two nested silicon tubes. The cladding ring in the fiber contributes to decrease the fundamental mode (FM) loss of x-polarization and enlarge the polarization-extinction ratio (PER). In addition, the nested silicon tubes can improve birefringence greatly. The combination of cladding ring, nested resonant tubes and nested silicon tubes can make the fiber obtain low FM loss, single-polarization, and high birefringence. Specifically, the proposed HC-ARF exhibits total FM loss of x-polarization, PER, and birefringence of 0.89 dB/km, 4432, 3.07×10^-4, respectively, at 1.55 µm. Moreover, the y-bend direction has a great influence on the propagation properties of the fiber. The fiber in the x-bend direction has low total bend-loss of 0.004 dB/m for a small bend radius of 5.8 cm.

Epsilon negative-based, broadband single-polarization single-mode hollow core anti-resonant photonic crystal fiber

A broadband single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) hollow core anti-resonant photonic crystal fiber (HC-ARPCF) is proposed and analyzed by the finite element method in this paper. The HC-ARPCF design consisted of outer semicircular cladding tubes and inner circular cladding tubes. The SPSM behavior is achieved through controlling the effective material absorption loss (EML) by loading epsilon negative (ENG) material in the selected semicircular cladding tubes. Optimization of the configuration parameters is conducted to yield a large loss difference (LD) between one of the two orthogonally polarized fundamental modes and all the other unwanted modes. Therefore, only one desired mode will exist after a proper propagation distance, i.e., SPSM guidance. Specially, the optimal design provides a 288 nm (from 1408 nm to 1676 nm and from 1680 nm to 1700 nm) bandwidth in terms of 40 dB/m minimum LD (MLD) and 168 nm (from 1452 nm to 1620 nm) bandwidth in terms of 100 dB/m MLD. Furthermore, this fiber also exhibits a large effective mode area and near-zero dispersion properties over the entire operation bandwidth. The proposed HC-ARPCF may find its applications in polarization maintaining and high-power laser systems.

Enhanced birefringence in conventional and hybrid anti-resonant hollow-core fibers

A hollow-core anti-resonant fiber (HC-ARF) design based on hybrid silica/silicon cladding is proposed for single-polarization, single-mode and high birefringence. We show that by adding silicon layers in a semi-nested HC-ARF, one of the polarization states can be strongly suppressed while simultaneously maintaining low propagation loss for other polarization states, single-mode and high birefiringence. The optimized HC-ARF design exhibits propagation loss, high birefringence, and polarization-extinction ratio of 0.05 dB/m, 0.5 × 10^-4, >300 respectively for y-polarization while the loss of x-polarization is >5 dB/m at 1064 nm. The fiber also has low bend-loss and thus can be coiled to a small bend radii of 5 cm having ≈0.06 dB/m bend loss.

Single-polarization single-mode double-ring hollow-core anti-resonant fiber

A novel single-polarization single-mode double-ring hollow-core anti-resonant fiber with two single-polarization regions (1545-1553 nm and 1591-1596 nm) is proposed. Single-polarization guidance is achieved by coupling a polarized fundamental mode and silica mode by using different tube thicknesses. Specifically, when the wavelength is 1550 nm, only a single x-polarized fundamental mode with a low loss of 0.04 dB/m is propagated by a polarization extinction ratio of 17662 and minimum higher-order mode extinction ratio of 393 by optimizing the structural parameters. Furthermore, this fiber also exhibits high-performance bend resistance. The x-polarized FM loss is as low as 0.11 dB/m with single-polarization single-mode guidance when the proposed fiber was bent at a bend radius of 8 cm toward the x-direction.

Smart design of fiber optic surfaces for improved plasmonic biosensing

Although the phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is known for more than a century now, traditional prism-based SPR platforms have hardly escaped the research laboratories despite being recognized for the sensitive and specific performance. Significant efforts have been made over the last years to overcome their existing limitations by coupling the SPR phenomenon to the fiber optic (FO) technology. While this platform has been promoted as cost-effective and simpler alternative capable of handling label-free bioassays, quantification and real-time monitoring of biomolecular interactions, examples of its applicability in sensing and biosensing remain to date very limited. The FO-SPR system is still in development and requires further advancements for reaching the stability and sensitivity of the benchmark SPR systems. Among existing strategies for device improvement, those based on modifying the FO tips using nanomaterials are mostly studied. These small-scale objects provide a wide range of possibilities for alternating the architecture of the FO sensitive zone, enabling also unique effects such as localized SPR (LSPR). This mini-review summarizes the latest innovations in the fabrication procedures which use nanoparticles or other nanomaterials, aiming at FO-SPR technology performance improvements, as well as addition of new device features and functionalities.

Effects of surface roughness of Ag thin films on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy of graphene: spatial nonlocality and physisorption strain

Metallic nanostructures are widely used for surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS). Nanoscale surface corrugation significantly affects the localized plasmon response and the subsequent Raman intensity of the molecules in close proximity to the nanostructures. Experimentally, the surface roughness of metal films can be controlled by adjusting the deposition conditions, and the resulting localized near-field properties can be probed by measuring the Raman spectrum of the conformally coated monolayer graphene. The well-known Raman characteristics of graphene and its atomic-level 2D nature make it an ideal test-bed for SERS measurements on corrugated metal films. In this work, we experimentally and theoretically study the effects of surface roughness of Ag thin films on the SERS of graphene. We find that the nonlocality effect of the metal dielectric response has to be taken into account for more accurate prediction of the SERS enhancement at large surface roughness. Our results also reveal that the effect of physisorption strain should be included to understand the Raman peak shift and spectral broadening. These observations are fundamentally important for understanding the SERS from metallic nanostructures with sub-nanoscale corrugation.

A miniaturized sensor consisting of concentric metallic nanorings on the end facet of an optical fiber

A polarization-independent optical sensor is created by fabricating a concentric gold ring grating with a period of 900 nm on the end facet of an optical fiber. The sensing function of this miniaturized device is realized by sending white light as a probe to the gold rings and collecting the response signal in the back-reflection through the optical fiber. A pronounced peak due to the Rayleigh anomaly of the gold ring grating is observed in the reflection spectrum, the center wavelength of which is sensitive to the change in the environmental refractive index of the fiber end facet. Theoretical analysis not only shows excellent agreement with the experimental results, but also gives insights into the mechanisms of this kind of sensor. Using the center position of the Rayleigh peak as the response signal, a high sensitivity dλ/dn of 900 nm per unity refractive index is realized for this sensor and a resolution of Δn/n ≈ 1% is demonstrated in preliminary experiments. The sensitivity is solely determined by the period of the grating.

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS): progress and trends

Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) combines molecular fingerprint specificity with potential single-molecule sensitivity. Therefore, the SERS technique is an attractive tool for sensing molecules in trace amounts within the field of chemical and biochemical analytics. Since SERS is an ongoing topic, which can be illustrated by the increased annual number of publications within the last few years, this review reflects the progress and trends in SERS research in approximately the last three years. The main reason why the SERS technique has not been established as a routine analytic technique, despite its high specificity and sensitivity, is due to the low reproducibility of the SERS signal. Thus, this review is dominated by the discussion of the various concepts for generating powerful, reproducible, SERS-active surfaces. Furthermore, the limit of sensitivity in SERS is introduced in the context of single-molecule spectroscopy and the calculation of the 'real' enhancement factor. In order to shed more light onto the underlying molecular processes of SERS, the theoretical description of SERS spectra is also a growing research field and will be summarized here. In addition, the recording of SERS spectra is affected by a number of parameters, such as laser power, integration time, and analyte concentration. To benefit from synergies, SERS is combined with other methods, such as scanning probe microscopy and microfluidics, which illustrates the broad applications of this powerful technique.

Creating high density nanoantenna arrays via plasmon enhanced particle-cavity (PEP-C) architectures

We propose a new solution for high hot-spot density creation by coupling a particle and a cavity in a structure dubbed a plasmonic enhanced particle-cavity (PEP-C) antenna. In comparison to analogous particle-based dimer antenna structures, the PEP-C allows both a higher maximum field and an order-of-magnitude higher hot-spot density. In addition, the hot-spots of the PEP-C antenna can be precisely controlled, resulting in increased reliability. We elucidate the photonic characteristics of the PEP-C antenna and show tuning and optimization through choice of geometric parameters. These properties make the PEP-C antenna an excellent candidate for plasmonic-based biomolecular sensors.