Odeta Limaj et al., report infrared plasmonic biosensor for real-time and lable-free monitoring of lipid membranes.
In this work, they present an infrared plasmonic biosensor for chemical-specific detection and monitoring of biomimetic lipid membranes in a label-free and real-time fashion. Lipid membranes constitute the primary biological interface mediating cell signaling and interaction with drugs and pathogens. By exploiting the plasmonic field enhancement in the vicinity of engineered and surface-modified nanoantennas, the proposed biosensor is able to capture the vibrational fingerprints of lipid molecules and monitor in real time the formation kinetics of planar biomimetic membranes in aqueous environments. Furthermore, they show that this plasmonic biosensor features high-field enhancement extending over tens of nanometers away from the surface, matching the size of typical bioassays while preserving high sensitivity.
Reference:
Odeta Limaj, Dordaneh Etezadi, Nathan J. Wittenberg, Daniel Rodrigo, Daehan Yoo, Sang-Hyun Oh, and Hatice Altug– Nano Lett., 2016, 16 (2), pp 1502–1508
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b05316
Link address: http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b05316