Abstract：Recent progress in the fundamental understanding and nanofabrication of plasmonic nanostructures makes possible unparalleled advances in miniaturized, sensitive, label-free plasmonic biosensors. These promise to have a far reaching impact on point of care diagnostics where low cost and portability are important. While these emerging sensors possess great system simplicity and low cost, the greatest remaining challenge to being commercially viable is increasing the sensitivity. The sensitivities of nanoplasmonic sensors realized to date are 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than those for conventional surface plasmon resonance (SPR) systems. In this talk, a novel class of nanoplasmonic sensors will be introduced that combines plasmonic architectures with sensitive interferometric techniques. The resulting plasmonic interferometric biosensors exhibit ultrahigh sensitivities greater than 3600 nm/RIUand record high sensing figures of merit exceeding 200, greatly surpassing those of previous nanoplasmonic sensors and are comparable to commercial SPR systems. Real-time and sensitive multiplexed sensing will also be demonstrated based on our novel plasmonic interferometric sensors.

Biography: FIL BARTOLI is currently the Chandler Weaver Endowed Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. Prior to joining Lehigh University in 2005, he was a Program Director in the Electrical and Communications Systems Division at the National Science Foundation. At NSF, he has managed research programs in Electronics, Photonics and Device Technologies, involving optoelectronics and photonics, MEMS, sensors, integrated microsystems, and biomedical applications. He also managed solicitations on high-capacity optical communications and on sensors and sensor networks, and was the managing program director for the ERC (Engineering Research Center) on extreme ultraviolet science and technology at Colorado State University. Before joining NSF, he worked for 29 years at the Naval Research Laboratory, first as a research physicist in the Optical Sciences Division, and later heading the Sources and Effects Section (1985-1993) and the Advanced Materials Section (1993-2000). At NRL he directed research on nonlinear optical organics and narrow-gap semiconductors, ultrafast processes, two-photon interactions, smectic liquid crystals, optical limiters, semiconductor micro- and nanostructures, and mid-IR quantum well lasers. He also performed research on infrared sensors, optical heating in semiconductors, and laser semiconductor interactions.He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the IEEE (Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers). He is a member of the American Physical Society, Sigma Xi, and the IEEE Laser and Electro-optical Society (LEOS). He is currently the IEEE LEOS Secretary/Treasurer and has served on the Board of Governors. He is also associate editor of the IEEE Journal of Quantum Electronics. Previously he served as co-Chair for the Short Course Program at CLEO/IQEC, member of the Steering Committee for the Conference on Lasers and Electro-optics (CLEO), a member of the Domestic Advisory Committee for the OSA Topical Meeting on Nonlinear Optics, Chair of the CLEO Technical Subcommittee for Optical Materials, Processing and Characterization, and has organized symposia at SPIE, ISDRS, and MRS meetings. He has published more than 300 technical papers, including more than 130 in refereed journals. He holds 18 patents and one license, and is co-editor of a book titled Properties of II-VI semiconductors. He earned his bachelor and master degrees in electrical engineering, and a Ph.D. in physics, from the Catholic University of America.