(786e) Electromagnetically Active Nanocomposite Metamaterial Biosensors

Title: Electromagnetically active nanocomposite
metamaterial biosensors

Abstract Body: Novel active biosensor platforms offer
both sensitive detection and real-time characterization of biological targets
in genomics, proteomics, and biomedical theranostic applications.  An example is quantized photon-exciton coupling which generates distance-dependent Forster
resonance energy transfer in spectroscopic molecular rulers.  We have recently distinguished quantized plasmon polarizabilities which
induce extraordinary opto-electronic coupling with
phase-dependent photon diffraction in ordered metalloceramic
nanocomposite metamaterials.  Metamaterials exhibit tunable electromagnetic functionality
-- from simple iridescence in butterfly wings to radiofrequency cloaking -- due
to coherent interference from multidimensional structuring of suitable
condensed-matter composites.  Sensitivity
enhancement from tunable electromagnetic coupling in metamaterials
appears more than 10-fold relative to sensitivities in conventional planar or
nanoparticle sensors based on surface plasmon
resonance.  Our lab has hybridized ?top-down'
lithography and ?bottom-up' metallization approaches to fabricate nanocomposite metamaterial
biosensor platforms.  Using scanning electron
microscopy and microspectroscopy we show that prototype
devices based on these platforms exhibit opto-electronic
sensitivities consistent with model predictions.   These advances in modeling, fabrication, and
prototype analysis are important milestones toward developing electromagnetically
active nanocomposite metamaterials
as biosensor platforms for next-generation disease diagnosis and personalized
medicine.