| Abstract: |
In this work, nanoplasmonic sensors realized on Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) chips for bio/chemical applications will be presented. In particular, on a PMMA substrate gold nanograting patterns are produced by exploiting e-beam lithography process to realize highly sensitive plasmonic sensor chips. The main advantage of this sensing approach is based on the capability to consider the PMMA substrate as a transparent substrate (monitoring the nanoplasmonic sensor chip via transmission mode) or to regard it as a slab waveguide (monitoring the nanoplasmonic chip via evanescent field). Therefore, different experimental sensor configurations can be used to change the performances of the nanoplasmonic sensors, obtaining several sensor tools useful for different bio/chemical application fields, such as Point-of-care applications. For instance, when the PMMA substrate is used as a slab waveguide, the nanostrips' orientation forming the grating pattern with respect to the direction of the input light (longitudinal or orthogonal) influences the performances. On the other hand, when the PMMA substrate is used as a transparent substrate, the orientation of the nanograting is not essential. However, both these experimental configurations used to monitor the PMMA-based nanoplasmonic chips present pros and cons. In addition, in nanoplasmonic sensors, in general terms, the use of polymers instead of other materials presents several pros and cons, as will be shown in this work. |