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Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light

Optical interferometry has empowered an impressive variety of biosensing and medical imaging techniques. A widely held assumption is that devices based on optical interferometry require coherent light to generate a precise optical signature in response to an analyte. Here we disprove that assumption...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Li, Dongfang, Feng, Jing, Pacifici, Domenico
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4754639/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26880171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20836
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author Li, Dongfang
Feng, Jing
Pacifici, Domenico
author_facet Li, Dongfang
Feng, Jing
Pacifici, Domenico
author_sort Li, Dongfang
collection PubMed
description Optical interferometry has empowered an impressive variety of biosensing and medical imaging techniques. A widely held assumption is that devices based on optical interferometry require coherent light to generate a precise optical signature in response to an analyte. Here we disprove that assumption. By directly embedding light emitters into subwavelength cavities of plasmonic interferometers, we demonstrate coherent generation of surface plasmons even when light with extremely low degrees of spatial and temporal coherence is employed. This surprising finding enables novel sensor designs with cheaper and smaller light sources, and consequently increases accessibility to a variety of analytes, such as biomarkers in physiological fluids, or even airborne nanoparticles. Furthermore, these nanosensors can now be arranged along open detection surfaces, and in dense arrays, accelerating the rate of parallel target screening used in drug discovery, among other high volume and high sensitivity applications.
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spelling pubmed-47546392016-02-24 Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light Li, Dongfang Feng, Jing Pacifici, Domenico Sci Rep Article Optical interferometry has empowered an impressive variety of biosensing and medical imaging techniques. A widely held assumption is that devices based on optical interferometry require coherent light to generate a precise optical signature in response to an analyte. Here we disprove that assumption. By directly embedding light emitters into subwavelength cavities of plasmonic interferometers, we demonstrate coherent generation of surface plasmons even when light with extremely low degrees of spatial and temporal coherence is employed. This surprising finding enables novel sensor designs with cheaper and smaller light sources, and consequently increases accessibility to a variety of analytes, such as biomarkers in physiological fluids, or even airborne nanoparticles. Furthermore, these nanosensors can now be arranged along open detection surfaces, and in dense arrays, accelerating the rate of parallel target screening used in drug discovery, among other high volume and high sensitivity applications. Nature Publishing Group 2016-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4754639/ /pubmed/26880171 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20836 Text en Copyright © 2016, Macmillan Publishers Limited http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
spellingShingle Article
Li, Dongfang
Feng, Jing
Pacifici, Domenico
Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
title Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
title_full Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
title_fullStr Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
title_full_unstemmed Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
title_short Nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
title_sort nanoscale optical interferometry with incoherent light
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4754639/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26880171
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep20836
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