Plasmon-Enhanced Chiroptical Biosensors

旋光法用于检测和表征固有的手性生物分子和生物材料已有两百多年的历史。在这项建议中，我们将使用21世纪的旋光法，它使用手性等离子体纳米结构产生的手性瞬变电磁场，而不是圆偏振光，来实现分析物的(亚)皮克检测/表征。我们将开发生物传感器，它使用等离子体增强的旋光法和超旋光法，既能传递结合事件，又能提供结合分析物的结构信息。这些传感器将提供分析物的无标记检测，并将以基于阵列的格式应用于复杂生物流体的分析，同时提供关于纳米级手部现象的基本信息。我们研究的核心愿景是创建一个基于等离子体增强手部效应的新传感器平台。除了这一目标外，我们预计我们将在手势行为的理解方面取得根本性的进展。在我们的研究过程中，我们将开发新的高通量方法来制造传感器，从而打开超极化技术在现实世界中的潜在应用。总而言之，我们的期望是，拟议的研究将提供所需的基础研究，以弥合基础发现和广泛使用的传感器平台之间的差距。

Polarimetry has been used for over two hundred years to detect and characterise inherently chiral biomolecules andbiomaterials. In this proposal we will use a 21st century "re-boot" of polarimetry, which uses chiral evanescentelectromagnetic fields produced by chiral plasmonic nanostructures instead of circularly polarised light, to achieve (sub)picogram detection / characterisation of an analyte. We will develop biosensors that use plasmon-enhanced polarimetry,superpolarimetry, to both transduce binding events and provide structural information on the bound analyte. These sensorswill provide label-free detection of analytes, and will be applied in an array-based format to the analysis of complex biofluidswhile providing fundamental information on nanoscale chiroptical phenomena.The vision at the heart of our research is the creation of a new sensor platform based on plasmon-enhanced chiropticaleffects. In addition to this goal, we expect that we will obtain fundamental advances in the understanding of chiropticalbehavior. In the course of our research we will develop new high-throughput methods to fabricate sensors, opening uppotential real-world applications of superpolarimetry. Taken together, our expectation is that the proposed research willprovide the foundational research required to bridge the gap between fundamental discovery and a widely useable sensorplatform.