High-Q Plasmonic Crystal Laser for Ultra-Sensitive Biomolecule Detection

Plasmonic lasers provide a paradigm-changing approach for the generation of coherent light at the nanoscale. In addition to the usual properties of coherent radiation, the emission of plasmonic lasers can feature high sensitivity to the surrounding environment, whichmakes this technology attractive for developing high-performance and highly-integrated sensing devices. Here, we investigate a plasmonic laser architecture based on a high- Q plasmonic crystal consisting of a periodic arrangement of nanoholes on a thin gold film cladded with an organic-dye-doped glass layer as the gain material. We report an extensive full-wave numerical analysis of the device's lasing performance and its application as a biochemical sensor, showing that the proposed design features excellent figures of merit for surface sensing that in principle can be over an order of magnitude larger than those of previously reported high-performance plasmonic biosensor architectures.

Automated summary

Plasmonic lasers provide a paradigm-changing approach for generating coherent light at the nanoscale, with high sensitivity to the surrounding environment for potential use in high-performance sensing devices. The proposed plasmonic laser architecture based on a high-Q plasmonic crystal shows excellent surface sensing properties, surpassing previously reported high-performance plasmonic biosensor architectures.