TY - JOUR A1 - Balderas-Valadez, Ruth Fabiola A1 - Pacholski, Claudia T1 - Plasmonic Nanohole Arrays on Top of Porous Silicon Sensors BT - A Win-Win Situation JF - ACS applied materials & interfaces N2 - Label-free optical sensors are attractive candidates, for example, for detecting toxic substances and monitoring biomolecular interactions. Their performance can be pushed by the design of the sensor through clever material choices and integration of components. In this work, two porous materials, namely, porous silicon and plasmonic nanohole arrays, are combined in order to obtain increased sensitivity and dual-mode sensing capabilities. For this purpose, porous silicon monolayers are prepared by electrochemical etching and plasmonic nanohole arrays are obtained using a bottom-up strategy. Hybrid sensors of these two materials are realized by transferring the plasmonic nanohole array on top of the porous silicon. Reflectance spectra of the hybrid sensors are characterized by a fringe pattern resulting from the Fabry–Pérot interference at the porous silicon borders, which is overlaid with a broad dip based on surface plasmon resonance in the plasmonic nanohole array. In addition, the hybrid sensor shows a significant higher reflectance in comparison to the porous silicon monolayer. The sensitivities of the hybrid sensor to refractive index changes are separately determined for both components. A significant increase in sensitivity from 213 ± 12 to 386 ± 5 nm/RIU is determined for the transfer of the plasmonic nanohole array sensors from solid glass substrates to porous silicon monolayers. In contrast, the spectral position of the interference pattern of porous silicon monolayers in different media is not affected by the presence of the plasmonic nanohole array. However, the changes in fringe pattern reflectance of the hybrid sensor are increased 3.7-fold after being covered with plasmonic nanohole arrays and could be used for high-sensitivity sensing. Finally, the capability of the hybrid sensor for simultaneous and independent dual-mode sensing is demonstrated. KW - optical sensors KW - porous silicon KW - surface plasmon resonance KW - plasmonic KW - nanohole arrays KW - bottom-up fabrication Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acsami.1c07034 SN - 1944-8244 SN - 1944-8252 VL - 13 IS - 30 SP - 36436 EP - 36444 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Polley, Nabarun A1 - Werner, Peter A1 - Balderas-Valadez, Ruth Fabiola A1 - Pacholski, Claudia T1 - Bottom, top, or in between BT - combining plasmonic nanohole arrays and hydrogel microgels for optical fiber snsor applications JF - Advanced materials interfaces N2 - Attractive label-free plasmonic optical fiber sensors can be developed by cleverly choosing the arrangement of plasmonic nanostructures and other building blocks. Here, the final response depends very much on the alignment and position (stacking) of the individual elements. In this work, three different types of fiber optic sensing geometries fabricated by simple layer-by-layer stacking are presented, consisting of stimulus-sensitive poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (polyNIPAM) microgel arrays and plasmonic nanohole arrays (NHAs), namely NHA/polyNIPAM, polyNIPAM/NHA, polyNIPAM/NHA/polyNIPAM. Their optical response to a representative stimulus, namely temperature, is investigated. NHA/polyNIPAM monitors the volume phase transition of polyNIPAM microgels through changes in the spectral position and the amplitude of the reflection minimum of plasmonic NHA. In contrast, polyNIPAM/NHA shows a more complex response to the swelling and collapse of polyNIPAM microgels in their reflectance spectra. The most pronounced changes in optical response are observed by monitoring the amplitude of the reflectance minimum of this sensor during heating/cooling cycles. Finally, the triple stack of polyNIPAM/NHA/polyNIPAM at the end of a optical fiber tip combines the advantages of the NHA/polyNIPAM, polyNIPAM/NHA double stacks for optical sensing. The unique layer-by-layer stacking of microgel and nanostructure is customizable and can be easily adopted for other applications. KW - bottom-up fabrication KW - layer-by-layer stacking KW - microgel arrays KW - optical KW - fiber sensors KW - plasmonic nanohole arrays Y1 - 2022 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/admi.202102312 SN - 2196-7350 VL - 9 IS - 15 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER -