Fabrication of Bloch Long Range Surface Plasmon Waveguides Integrating Counter Electrodes and Microfluidic Channels for Multimodal Biosensing

We report the fabrication of a novel multimodal biosensor combining plasmonic and electrochemical detection. The plasmonic sensors are based on monitoring the propagation of Bloch long-range surface plasmon polaritons (LRSPPs) along thin narrow Au stripes, integrating grating couplers as input/output means. The electrochemical sensors use the same Au stripes as working electrodes with nearby Pt stripes integrated on-chip as counter electrodes. The structures are fabricated on a truncated 1D photonic crystal comprised of a 15-period stack of alternating layers of SiO
₂
/Ta
₂
O
₅
. The Au and Pt stripes are fabricated using bilayer lift-off photolithography, and the gratings are fabricated using e-beam lithography. The structures are arranged into arrays targeting multichannel biosensing. The wafer is covered with CYTOP as the upper cladding with etched microfluidic channels providing access to the sensing surfaces and is wafer-bonded to a Borofloat silica wafer to encapsulate the fluidic channels and enable edge (in-plane) fluidic interfacing. The wavelength response of the grating-coupled plasmonic waveguide sensors is presented along with surface sensing results. Cyclic voltammetry measurements using the Au and Pt stripes as the working and counter electrodes are also presented. [2021-0103]