Hooman Mohseni's students' discovery is IEEE cover story

Alireza BonakdarDibyendu DeyJack Kohoutek and Ryan Gelfand, students in BISOL, the Bio-ispired Sensors and Optoelectronics Laboratory under the supervision of Prof. Hooman Mohseni, have their research featured in the cover of Photonics Technology Letters, an IEEE Photonics Society publication.

In November the Daily Northwestern published a story about the students' discovery which could detect cancer or anthrax in moments. 

Their research is explained: A novel plasmonic nano-antenna has been designed and fabricated based on an AU-SSiO_2-Au single nanorod integrated on the facet of a quantum cascade laser, as seen in "Composite Nano-Antenna Integrated With Quantum Cascade Laser," by D. Dey, et al., p. 1580.  Simulation study showed that the peak optical lintensity at the top of the antenna ends is 400 times greater than the incident field intensity.  Midinfrared near-field optical microscopy showed that the fabricated device can generate a spatially confined spot within a size about 12 times smaller than the operating wavelength.  Exploiting optical nano-antennas to boost the near-field confinement within a small volume can increase the limit of molecular detection by an order of magnitude.  By utilizing such high to boost the near-field confinement within a small volume can increase the limit of molecular detection by an order of magnitude.  By utilizing such high intensity and hot spot locations that can lead to increasing photon interaction with bio-molecules, the integrated plasmonic laser antenna can be used in making sensitive bio-sensors.

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