Nanostructured Hyperbolic Metamaterials for Magnetoplasmonic Sensors

Abstract

We demonstrate numerically a concept for highly integrated magnetoplasmonic biosensors made with nanostructured magnetooptical (MO) hyperbolic metamaterials (HMMs). The concept is based on the use of enhanced amplitudes of ultranarrow peaks of the transverse magnetooptical Kerr effect (TMOKE). In contrast to conventional magnetoplasmonic transducers that employ wide surface plasmon resonances, we use bulk plasmon polariton modes in HMMs. In sensing through changes in the refractive index of water, a figure of merit on the order of 8 × 102 was observed, to be compared with 590 for non-MO HMMs. This allows for improved resolution detection of low-molecular-weight analytes at concentrations on the order of picomolar.