Plasmon field effect transistor: A novel sensing platform for biomedical applications

The interest in plasmons, associated with nanostructured metals, has remarkably increased in the past decade. A Recent improvement in fabrication techniques to create well-controlled nanostructures also contributed to the rapid development of plasmonic applications, such as meta-materials, nonlinear optics, photovoltaic devices, biomedical sensors, medical therapies and spectroscopy. The surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor is one of the successful applications, which is widely used in biomedical research. On the other hand, localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) is also widely studied in a broad range of applications. The distinct property of LSPR is a tailored and sharp absorption/scattering peaks depending on the shape and sizes of the metal nanostructures. In addition, plasmonics can enable integration of high speed optical circuit by taking the advantages from the current electronics and optics technologies. Thus, plasmonics is considered as a solution for the next generation systems that offers ultra-high speed data processing. In this dissertation, we will introduce a novel plasmon field effect transistor (FET) that enables direct detection and efficient amplification of plasmon energy. This FET has several advantages such as electrical isolation of plasmon absorber nanostructures from a sensing and drug screening. Currently, we have proof of concept for the antigen-antibody bonding using the plasmon field effect transistor. We will develop a multiplexing capable plasmon FET sensing platform by integrating an array of plasmon FETs with microfluidic channels to detect cancer biomarkers.