Development of a novel Sensor based on surface plasmon resonance

Remarkable advances especially in the last several decades in the field of nanotechnologies have established a new research field so called as biosensor applications under field of sensor technologies. Pioneering sensor applications capable of detecting fundamental physical and chemical parameters alike pressure, temperature, movement, moisture and density have now started to evolve capability of sensing changes in molecular levels with thanks to the progress in biotehnology due to the advances in nanotechnologies. In this sense, the technic so called as 'surface plasmon resonance' in scientific literature, emerges as a phenomenon that has been first observed in the first quarter of 20th century and it is based on analysis and mathematical modeling of the fact behind the nature of reflections when light beams are incident on a specific surface under certain conditions. Investigation of whose mathematical modelling long lasted till 1980's, was then first utilized as a sensing interface in the beginning of 1990's by a group of swedish scientists and this phenomenon was used in the implementation of gas sensing. In the following years researchers inspired with this trial have initiated an approach in order to design bio-sensing platforms that would have a sensing ability in molecular level for detection and monitoring of binding interactions that occurs selectively among molecules. Today the idea about this technique to be a faster, more sensitive, reliable and easily applicable alternative to conventional methods gets much more stronger. Herein this doctorate thesis work is based on the aforesaid approach within the scope of researching an integrated novel opto-electro-mechanical biosensor mechanism and developing a sensing platform assisted by some specific interaction protocols for the validation of overall system capabilities. This thesis work is fundamentally based on a novel approach for the development and production of a special substrate that will excite the surface plasmons that are utilized as the detecting interface. So that emergent sensing platform functions as a signal detecting opto-electronic interface in the form of an integrated opto-electronic interface that can be miniatuarized at very high-levels. Proof-of-principle functionality of the overall sensing platform has been evaluated by a group of experimental researches in order to demonstrate its capability to detect very small index changes occuring in several certain projected liquid solutions and emergent promising results have been published in Lab On Chip journal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Finally with the goal of demonstration so that the developed sensing platform can be utilized as a promising bio-sensor, real-time monitoring of a specific DNA hybridization protocol have been implemented and thereafter its related promising results have been exhibited in the last section. Within the scope of this thesis work, concluding afore mentioned precessor experimental implementations with a set of promising outcomes has satisfactorily opened the path for devising new possible future applications using this sensing platform. These long-lasting experimental researches have meanwhile resulted in a patented sensing mechanism with a high added value that could be transferred into industry and without cutting any speed the activities with the goal of ending up with a compact device that would be presented to its end-users are currently still carried on.