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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Chapter 3 Surface Plasmon Optics for the Characterization of Biofunctional Architectures

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Publisher Summary This chapter describes a wide variety of work employing surface plasmon resonance (SPR), surface plasmon field-enhanced fluorescence spectroscopy (SPFS), and surface plasmon field-enhanced diffraction spectroscopy (SPDS) analysis, specifically for investigations relevant to biofunctional, bio-affinity aspects. The SPR has shown already its impact on interfacial analysis. The combination of these three methods has the potential to generate more information and reveal details of biofunctional interfaces. The versatility of the SPR technique is shown by a vast amount of publications in the past decades; the method has matured into a well-accepted analytical tool for the characterization of interfaces and thin films as well as for the sensitive detection of interfacial biomolecular interaction. With a significant input from engineering, SPR has reached a decent signal-to-noise level. However, the intrinsic label-free characteristic of SPR detection technique still imposes limitation on further sensitivity improvement, especially if the analysis involves small molecules. Alternatively, various analytical methods based on SPR phenomenon are developed, including surface plasmon field-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS), SPFS, surface enhanced second harmonic generation (SHG), surface enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA), and SPDS. Most of these methods take advantage of the greatly enhanced electromagnetic field of surface plasmon waves to excite a chromophoric molecule—for example, a Raman molecule or a fluorescent dye.