Protein analysis by Mach-Zehnder interferometers with a hybrid plasmonic waveguide with nano-slots

Optical biosensing devices for the affinity analysis of molecular binding events could offer significant advantages over current analytical methods. However, most of those excited with a single optical mode are “blind” to the conformational change of bound molecules. We succeeded in designing Mach-Zehnder interferometers (MZI) with a hybrid plasmonic (HP) waveguide with nano-slots. By addressing the structure with dual polarizations, the optogeometrical properties (density and thickness) of protein layers have been determined without ambiguity. Differences in the hybrid mode dispersion between the transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) modes separately allow the determination of the thickness and the density at all stages during the molecular interaction. Moreover, nano-slots can be equated with an effective optical capacitance resulting in strong field confinement and low propagation loss. A proof of concept is conducted by analyzing the conformational change of HepV, a recombinant fragment of collagen V, during complicated molecular interaction. Instead of wavelength interrogation, a cost-effective method with output intensity variation at particular wavelengths due to “resonance phenomena” was employed to monitor the biological event.