Deposited nanorod films for photonic crystal biosensor applications

Planar photonic crystals have been used as the basis of many biological sensing devices. Here, the authors successfully demonstrated that the combination of the photonic crystal structures and a dielectric nanorod coating prepared by the glancing-angle deposition technique can lead to significant increases in the device sensitivity. By incorporating a TiO2 nanorod coating onto the label-free photonic crystal biosensor structure, the surface area of the device is increased. The results for detection of polymer films and proteins indicate up to a 5.5 fold enhancement of detected adsorbed mass density.