Bloch surface waves confined in one dimension with a single polymeric nanofibre.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 28155871.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/ncomms14330 and PMC identifier 5296743.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Polymeric fibres with small radii (such as ≤125 nm) are delicate to handle and should be laid down on a solid substrate to obtain practical devices. However, placing these nanofibres on commonly used glass substrates prevents them from guiding light. In this study, we numerically and experimentally demonstrate that when the nanofibre is placed on a suitable dielectric multilayer, it supports a guided mode, a Bloch surface wave (BSW) confined in one dimension. The physical origin of this new mode is discussed in comparison with the typical two-dimensional BSW mode. Polymeric nanofibres are easily fabricated to contain fluorophores, which make the dielectric nanofibre and multilayer configuration suitable for developing a large range of new nanometric scale devices, such as processor-memory interconnections, devices with sensitivity to target analytes, incident polarization and multi-colour BSW modes.