In situ photoelectric biosensing based on ultranarrowband near-infrared plasmonic hot electron photodetection

Narrowband photodetection is an important measurement technique for material analysis and sensing, for example, nondispersive infrared sensing technique. Both photoactive material engineering and nanophotonic filtering schemes have been explored to realize wavelength-selective photodetection, while most devices have a responsive bandwidth larger than 2% of the operating wavelength, limiting sensing performance. Near-infrared photodetection with a bandwidth of less than 0.2% of the operating wavelength was demonstrated experimentally in Au/Si Schottky nanojunctions. A minimum linewidth of photoelectric response down to 2.6 nm was obtained at a wavelength of 1550 nm by carefully tailing the absorptive and radiative loss in the nanostructures. Multiple functions were achieved on chip with the corrugated Au film, including narrowband resonance, light harvesting for sensing and photodetection, and electrodes for hot electron emission. Benefiting from such a unity integration with in situ photoelectric conversion of the optical sensing signal and the ultranarrowband resonance, self-contained on-chip biosensing via simple intensity interrogation was demonstrated with a limit of detection down to 0.0047% in concentration for glucose solution and 150 ng/mL for rabbit IgG. Promising potential of this technique is expected for the applications in on-site sensing, spectroscopy, spectral imaging, etc.