1243 results about "Surface plasmon resonance" patented technology

Methods and applications of surface plasmon resonance-enhanced antibacterial, anti-adhere, adhere, catalytic, hydrophilic, hydrophobic, spectral change, biological and chemical decomposition properties of materials with embedded nanoparticles are disclosed. A method of the nonlinear generation of surface plasmon resonance enables the use of light with wavelengths from X-Ray to IR to enhance properties of materials by several orders of magnitude. The nanoparticle size is crucial for the enhancement and their size is considered to be in the proposed methods and applications within a range of 0.1 nm to 200,000 nm. The nanoparticles preferably are made of noble metals and / or semiconductor oxides. The invention describes a very broad spectrum of applications of surface plasmon resonance-enhanced properties of materials with embedded nanoparticles, from environmental cleanup by road pavement and construction materials, self-cleaning processes of surface materials, thermochromic effects on heat blocking materials, corrosion preventing paint, to sanitization by antibacterial textile fabrics, filters, personal clothing, contact lenses and medical devices.

A method and apparatus for performing refractive index, birefringence and optical activity measurements of a material such as a solid, liquid, gas or thin film is disclosed. The method and apparatus can also be used to measure the properties of a reflecting surface. The disclosed apparatus has an optical ring-resonator in the form of a fiber-loop resonator, or a race-track resonator, or any waveguide-ring or other structure with a closed optical path that constitutes a cavity. A sample is introduced into the optical path of the resonator such that the light in the resonator is transmitted through the sample and relative and / or absolute shifts of the resonance frequencies or changes of the characteristics of the transmission spectrum are observed. A change in the transfer characteristics of the resonant ring, such as a shift of the resonance frequency, is related to a sample's refractive index (refractive indices) and / or change thereof. In the case of birefringence measurements, rings that have modes with two (quasi)-orthogonal (linear or circular) polarization states are used to observe the relative shifts of the resonance frequencies. A reflecting surface may be introduced in a ring resonator. The reflecting surface can be raster-scanned for the purpose of height-profiling surface features. A surface plasmon resonance may be excited and phase changes of resonant light due to binding of analytes to the reflecting surface can be determined in the frequency domain.

Composition of methods and devices for surface plasmon resonance-enhanced medical and cosmetic procedures are disclosed. The invention relates to the use of a nonlinear surface plasmon resonance generation source and metal nanoparticles embedded to a body to enhance medical and cosmetic procedures in the body. The methods and devices in this invention can be applied for very effective three-dimensionally localized body surgery, tattoo removal, skin pigmentation removal, hair removal, drug delivery, photodynamic therapy, thrombosis, lithotripsy and cosmetic body treatment. The present invention relates also to a method of making temporary, semi-permanent and permanent tattoos with surface plasmon resonance technique.

Optical Integrated Circuits (OIC) in Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) Analysis Systems combined with micorarray or microwell plates to provide enhanced sensitivity, stability, speed of analysis and reduced size are disclosed. Using the OIC with other optical analysis methods to provide enhance analysis systems is also disclosed.

The invention discloses a method and spectral-imaging device for optochemical sensing with plasmon-modified multiband fluorescence polarization and with plasmon-modified polarization phase shift changes of a light beam reflected and / or passed through a total internal reflection conducting structure. The optochemical sensing is performed for molecules placed nearby the conducting structure and being excited by surface plasmon resonance (SPR) to lower excited state (LES) and / or to higher excited states (HES). The invention also describes the spectral imaging device with an improved sensitivity of several orders of magnitude. The disclosed method and imaging device may find applications in clinical diagnostics, pharmaceutical screening, biomedical research, biochemical-warfare detection and other diagnostic techniques. The device can be used in bio-chip and micro-array technologies, flowcytometer, fiber optic and other types of diagnostic devices.

Optical plasmon-wave attenuator and modulator structures for controlling the amount of coupling between an guided optical signal and a surface plasmon wave. Optical power coupled to the plasmon wave mode is dissipated in varying amounts producing an intensity modulation effect on the optical signal. For electrical modulation, an additional dielectric (or polymer) layer with variable refractive index in optical contact with a metal layer supporting at least one plasmon wave mode is used to perturb or vary the propagation constant of plasmon wave. Propagation constant variation results in the power coupling variation between the surface plasmon wave and the optical wave. The refractive index variation of the dielectric (or polymer) layer can be accomplished via an electro-optic traveling-wave, a lump-element, or any other integrated optics modulator configuration situated to affect the layer, thereby permitting data rates into tens of GHz. Because of the extremely small interaction lengths needed, the optical plasmon-wave modulator is a very compact device which can be implemented on the top of a fiber or as an integrated optical planar structure.

Optoelectronic devices and methods for their fabrication having enhanced and controllable rates of the radiative relaxation of triplet light emitters are provided exemplified by organic light emitting devices based on phosphorescent materials with enhanced emission properties. Acceleration of the radiative processes is achieved by the interaction of the light emitting species with surface plasmon resonances in the vicinity of metal surfaces. Non-radiative Förster-type processes are efficiently suppressed by introducing a transparent dielectric or molecular layer between the metal surface and the chromophore. For materials with low emission oscillator strengths (such as triplet emitters), the optimal separation distance from the metal surface is determined, thus suppressing energy transfer and achieving a significant acceleration of the emission rate.

A display system having a non-absorbing and reflective color filtering array and a reflector to improve light utilization efficiency. One implementation of the color filtering array uses a surface plasmon filter having two symmetric metal-dielectric interfaces coupled with each other to produce a transmission optical wave at a surface plasmon resonance wavelength at one interface from a p-polarized input beam on the other interface. Another implementation of the color filtering array uses a metal-film interference filter having two dielectric layers and three metallic films.

An SPR (surface plasmon resonance) sensor cell comprising: a light-transparent core; a clad covering the core and having a through hole at a predetermined position to communicate with the core; and a predetermined thin metal film formed on an exposed surface of the core corresponding to the through hole.

A system according to one embodiment includes a magnetic recording medium having a magnetic layer with features in a discrete track configuration or a bit patterned configuration and an underlayer adjacent the magnetic layer, the underlayer comprising a material capable of forming surface plasmon resonance; and a magnetic head having: a writer for writing to the medium; and a near-field transducer for heating the medium for thermally assisted recording. Additional systems and methods are also presented.

A flow imaging system is used to implement surface plasmon resonance (SPR) detection to study bio-molecular interactions. The flow imaging system is used to capture SPR absorption spectra of large numbers of objects, where each object includes both a metal film capable of exhibiting SPR, and detecting molecules. Analyte molecules are added to a solution of such objects, and the result is introduced into the flow imaging system which collects full SPR spectral data from individual objects. The objects can be nanoparticles or larger particles that support metal island films. The SPR spectral data can be used to determine specificity, kinetics, affinity, and concentration with respect to the interactions between the detecting molecules and the analyte molecules.

A non-vacuum-based, non-collodial chemistry-based method of synthesizing metal nanoparticles and nanoparticle-nanostructured material composites obtained by that method. An embodiment of the method of this invention for fabricating a nanoparticle-nanostructured material composite and synthesizing nanoparticles includes preparing a nanostructured / nanotextured material, and, contacting the nanostructured / nanotextured material with a solution. Nanoparticles are synthesized on the nanostructured / nanotextured material as a result of the contact. The method of the present invention can be utilized to fabricate SPR and SERS substrates for sensing and detection. Additional systems based on this approach (e.g., surface plasmon resonance absorption and alloying sensors and nanocatalysts) are described.

A medical diagnostic method utilizes a surface plasmon resonance apparatus provided with a sensing surface. A tear sample from an eye of a patient is placed into contact with the sensing surface. The surface plasmon resonance apparatus is then operated to determine osmolarity of the tear sample.

Optical coating materials comprise a transparent matrix material having dispersed nanoparticles comprising between 1 and 20 volume percent of the optical coating material. The coating materials are used to form optical coatings on substrates, such as glass / ceramic, polymer or metal, to alter the color or other optical properties. The nanoparticles are semiconductive material or elemental metals or elemental metal alloys that exhibit surface plasmon resonance.

A method of forming a fine pattern begins with providing a c-plane hexagonal semiconductor crystal. A mask having a predetermined pattern is formed on the semiconductor crystal. The semiconductor crystal is dry-etched by using the mask to form a first fine pattern on the semiconductor crystal. The semiconductor crystal including the first fine pattern is wet-etched to expand the first fine pattern in a horizontal direction to form a second fine pattern. The second fine pattern obtained in the wet-etching the semiconductor crystal has a bottom surface and a sidewall that have unique crystal planes, respectively. The present fine-pattern forming process can be advantageously applied to a semiconductor light emitting device, particularly, to a phonic crystal structure required to have fine patterns or a structure using a surface plasmon resonance principle.

A surface plasmon resonance device of the present invention includes a transparent medium layer and a conductive layer, a periodic structure being present at the interface therebetween. Assuming that the wavelength of visible light incident on the conductive layer through the transparent medium layer is λ (nm), the periodicity of the periodic structure is (λ / 633)×100 nm to (λ / 633)×500 nm, and the amplitude of the periodic structure is (λ / 633)×5 nm to (λ / 633)×20 nm. For example, when λ=633 nm, the periodicity of the periodic structure is 100 nm to 500 nm, and the amplitude is 5 nm to 20 nm.

A novel surface plasmon resonance (SPR) imaging system based on modified Mach-Zehnder phase-shifting interferometry (PSI) measures the spatial phase variation of a resonantly reflected light during chemical or biological detection. The SPR microarray can diagnose the target analyte without additional labeling in the real-time analysis. Experimental results demonstrate that the detection limit of the SPR PSI imaging system is improved to about 1 pg / mm<2 >surface coverage of chemical or biological material for each individual spot over that of the conventional SPR imaging system. Therefore, the SPR PSI imaging system and its SPR microarray can provide the capability of real-time analysis, with high resolution and at high-throughput screening rates.

Electromagnetic radiation from an optical source is directed onto a metallic structure. The metallic structure in turn emits optical output from an emission region in the structure and onto a recording medium (e.g., a magnetic recording disk), thereby heating the medium. The output from the emission region is enhanced due to surface plasmons in the metallic structure. The surface plasmons are generated by an array of features (such as ridges or trenches) in the metallic structure and act to increase the emitted optical output from the emission region beyond what the emitted optical output from the emission region would be in the absence of these features. The apparatus and associated method are useful for data recording, e.g., thermally assisted data recording.

The present invention is in related to a miniature surface plasmon resonance waveguide device with sinusoidal curvature compensation and at least comprises: a substract, a waveguide structure, a sensing film layer and a cover layer, wherein the waveguide structure is configured with the function of sinusoidal curvature compensation and installed above the substract, further that, the waveguide structure includes a light input port and a light output port; the sensing film layer is on a special region of the waveguide structure, the special region is a sensing region; the cover layer is upper than the substract and has an opening. By means of the optimal curve figure of the sinusoidal curvature compensation, attenuation of light energy can be minimized while in propagation, and allows the input and output of the light on the same side of the device.

Methods and structures for providing single-color or multi-color photo-detectors leveraging plasmon resonance for performance benefits. In one example, a radiation detector includes a semiconductor absorber layer having a first electrical conductivity type and an energy bandgap responsive to radiation in a first spectral region, a semiconductor collector layer coupled to the absorber layer and having a second electrical conductivity type, and a plasmonic resonator coupled to the collector layer and having a periodic structure including a plurality of features arranged in a regularly repeating pattern.

Membrane proteins are difficult to express in recombinant form, purify, and characterize, at least in part due to their hydrophobic or partially hydrophobic properties. The membrane scaffold proteins (MSP) of the present invention assemble with target membrane or other hydrophobic or partially hydrophobic proteins or membrane fragments to form soluble nanoscale particles which preserve their native structure and function; they are improved over liposomes and detergent micelles. In the presence of phospholipid, MSPs form nanoscopic phospholipid bilayer disks, with the MSP stabilizing the particle at the perimeter of the bilayer domain. The particle bilayer structure allows manipulation of incorporated proteins in solution or on solid supports, including for use with such surface-sensitive techniques as scanning probe microscopy or surface plasmon resonance. The nanoscale particles, which are robust in terms of integrity and maintenance of biological activity of incorporated proteins, facilitate pharmaceutical and biological research, structure / function correlation, structure determination, bioseparation, and drug discovery.

There is a need for a detection device which has high photoreceptive sensitivity in a generally wide frequency region including the infrared region. Therefore, in the present invention, by utilizing a phenomenon in which electric field strength is enhanced by surface plasmon resonance in a negative dielectric constant medium, a detection device is provided which has an electromagnetic wave detection portion disposed at a position where the electric field strength is large.

A grating coupled surface plasmon resonance optical modulator is disclosed. A electro-optic polymer dielectric is deposited on the metallic surface of a diffraction grating to provide a metal / dielectric interface. A surface plasmon will propagate at the metal / dielectric interface in a resonant condition, e.g., when the metal surface is illuminated by transverse magnetic (TM) polarized light of the appropriate wavelength, angle of incidence and phase velocity. In the present invention, phase velocity is controlled by the diffraction grating. A transparent electrode deposited on the electro-optic layer allows an electrical potential to be applied across the electro-optic polymer. The applied electrical potential (voltage) changes the index of refraction of the electro-optic polymer, thereby disrupting the resonant condition to produce an optically detectable change in reflectance of incident light from the metal layer. The disclosed grating coupled surface plasmon resonance optical modulator may be configured as an electronically or optically addressable array.

A quantum dot light-emitting device includes a substrate, a first electrode, a hole injection layer (“HIL”), a hole transport layer (“HTL”), an emitting layer, an electron transport layer (“ETL”), a plurality of nanoplasmonic particles buried in the ETL, and a second electrode.

Methods and applications of surface plasmon resonance-enhanced antibacterial, anti-adhere, adhere, catalytic, hydrophilic, hydrophobic, spectral change, biological and chemical decomposition properties of materials with embedded nanoparticles are disclosed. A method of the nonlinear generation of surface plasmon resonance enables the use of light with wavelengths from X-Ray to IR to enhance properties of materials by several orders of magnitude. The nanoparticle size is crucial for the enhancement and their size is considered to be in the proposed methods and applications within a range of 0.1 nm to 200,000 nm. The nanoparticles preferably are made of noble metals and / or semiconductor oxides. The invention describes a very broad spectrum of applications of surface plasmon resonance-enhanced properties of materials with embedded nanoparticles, from environmental cleanup by road pavement and construction materials, self-cleaning processes of surface materials, thermochromic effects on heat blocking materials, corrosion preventing paint, to sanitization by antibacterial textile fabrics, filters, personal clothing, contact lenses and medical devices.

The invention relates to an SPR sensor array comprising a plurality of SPR sensor surface areas (120) arranged on a substrate (10, 20) in a two-dimensional matrix located in a plane to which the SPR sensor surface areas (120) are parallel and whereby radiation capable of exciting surface plasmons in the SPR sensor surface areas (120) under specific physical conditions can be guided through the substrate (10, 20) to be reflected from the SPR sensor surface areas, as well as separating means (110) for separating each SPR sensor surface area (120) from its neighboring SPR sensor surface area (120), wherein the separating means (110) and SPR sensor surface areas (120) are provided such that at least outside of surface plasmon resonance occurring in the SPR sensor surface areas (120) the radiation (40) guided through the substrate (10, 20) is reflected in the region of the separating means to a different degree than in the region of the SPR sensor surface areas (120) to create a contrast between the separating means (110) and the SPR sensor surface areas (120) at least outside of surface plasmon resonance occurring in the SPR sensor surface areas (120) in the radiation reflected by the SPR sensor surface areas (120) and the separating means (110).

Optical Integrated Circuits (OIC) in Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) Analysis Systems combined with micorarray or microwell plates to provide enhanced sensitivity, stability, speed of analysis and reduced size are disclosed. Using the OIC with other optical analysis methods to provide enhance analysis systems is also disclosed.