During the last decades, the continuing need for faster and smaller sensors has indeed triggered the rapid growth of more sophisticated technologies. This has led to the development of new optical-based sensors, able to detect and measure different phenomena using light. Furthermore, material processing technologies and micro fabrication methods have exponentially advanced, allowing engineers and scientists to develop new and more complex sensors on optical fibers platforms; specifically attractive for life science and biomedical research. All these substantial developments have brought biosensors to a point where multifunctionality is needed, this has led to envision the "Lab-on-Fiber" concept. Which promotes the integration of different sensing components into a single platform, an optical fiber.
In this work, an integrated system with non-conventional polymer optical fibers and their further surface modification has been developed. With these different approaches, electrodes, hollow channels and plasmonic nanostructures can be incorporated into a single optical fiber-based sensor, allowing for both electrical and optical sensing with the capabilities of tuning and signal enhancement thanks to the metallic nanostructures. Different fiber substrates can be designed and modified in order to satisfy multiple requirements for a wide variety of applications. / MS / Silica optical fibers have been used since the 1960’s to guide optical signals, such as light, with low losses through long distances; making them an attractive platform to use in large communication systems. However, over the past couple of decades researchers have been trying to implement these low-loss platforms in sensing devices for many different fields, such as environmental and structural monitoring, and chemical and biomedical research. Unfortunately, their high brittleness has prompted researchers to introduce different materials in the same technology, leveraging the development of multimaterial non-conventional fibers. Where different polymers and even metals have replaced silica as the structural material, making these fibers more cost-affordable, flexible, and allow for multi-sensing capabilities of both electrical and optical signals.
Although these multimaterial fibers are able to transmit light, they need to be functionalized or modified in order for them to be able to sense different phenomena occurring in their surrounding media. This can be achieved by integrating small particles or structures onto the fibers end-faces, these small structures are known as plasmonic nanostructures. When light (electromagnetic radiation) travels through a fiber and interacts with the free (conduction) electrons of a metallic nanostructure, it leads to a coupling that results in collective oscillations, which produce strong enhancement of the local electromagnetic fields surrounding the nanostructures. The latter can be easily detected with the help of an optical spectrum analyzer that iv stores the transmitted light as a function of the transmitted wavelength. Noble metals like gold and silver produce unprecedented electromagnetic field enhancements and are also biocompatible, making them very attractive in biosensing applications.
In this research metallic plasmonic nanostructures were deposited on the end face of multimaterial polymer fibers to enhance the optical properties and potentially the electrical properties as well, creating new sensing devices. The enhancement produced by these structures was studied with both experimental measurements and theoretical simulations. The results demonstrate that the nanostructures investigated in this work can indeed enhance the optical properties of the used polymer fibers, enabling them to work as sensing probes for a many different applications, especially biosensing research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/96145 |
| Date | 27 June 2018 |
| Creators | Lopez Marcano, Ana Graciela |
| Contributors | Electrical Engineering, Jia, Xiaoting, Zhou, Wei, Zhu, Yunhui |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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