Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2024 Jun 21;10(13):e33272.
doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e33272. eCollection 2024 Jul 15.

Recent advances in the metamaterial and metasurface-based biosensor in the gigahertz, terahertz, and optical frequency domains

Shadmani Shamim  1 , Abu S M Mohsin  1 , Md Mosaddequr Rahman  1 , Mohammed Belal Hossain Bhuian  1
Affiliations
Review

Recent advances in the metamaterial and metasurface-based biosensor in the gigahertz, terahertz, and optical frequency domains

Shadmani Shamim et al. Heliyon. .

Abstract

Recently, metamaterials and metasurface have gained rapidly increasing attention from researchers due to their extraordinary optical and electrical properties. Metamaterials are described as artificially defined periodic structures exhibiting negative permittivity and permeability simultaneously. Whereas metasurfaces are the 2D analogue of metamaterials in the sense that they have a small but not insignificant depth. Because of their high optical confinement and adjustable optical resonances, these artificially engineered materials appear as a viable photonic platform for biosensing applications. This review paper discusses the recent development of metamaterial and metasurface in biosensing applications based on the gigahertz, terahertz, and optical frequency domains encompassing the whole electromagnetic spectrum. Overlapping features such as material selection, structure, and physical mechanisms were considered during the classification of our biosensing applications. Metamaterials and metasurfaces working in the GHz range provide prospects for better sensing of biological samples, THz frequencies, falling between GHz and optical frequencies, provide unique characteristics for biosensing permitting the exact characterization of molecular vibrations, with an emphasis on molecular identification, label-free analysis, and imaging of biological materials. Optical frequencies on the other hand cover the visible and near-infrared regions, allowing fine regulation of light-matter interactions enabling metamaterials and metasurfaces to offer excellent sensitivity and specificity in biosensing. The outcome of the sensor's sensitivity to an electric or magnetic field and the resonance frequency are, in theory, determined by the frequency domain and features. Finally, the challenges and possible future perspectives in biosensing application areas have been presented that use metamaterials and metasurfaces across diverse frequency domains to improve sensitivity, specificity, and selectivity in biosensing applications.

Keywords: Biosensing; Frequency domain; Metamaterials; Metasurface; Sensor configuration.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Classification of Metamaterials and Metasurfaces in Biosensing Applications based on the frequency domains, materials, and mechanism.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Left (a) The structure of biosensing based on SRR cluster (a) Microstrip transmission line top view. Right (b) Cross-sectional area of a microstrip transmission line with SRR pair and the distribution of electromagnetic field schematic [71].
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
Left (a) Split ring resonator (SRR) and (b) Double split ring resonator (DSRR) (metamaterial cell in a square lattice). (c) Schematic diagram of a metamaterial-based biosensor strip [95]. Right (d) Schematic of THz nano-gap based metamaterial for the sensing of viruses [96].
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
Left (a) A simulation model of the split ring resonators created using the finite element method (FEM) is shown in schematic form. The length (l), width (w), gap (g), and separation between adjacent SRRs within each array serve as the primary design parameters for each of the two different types of SRRs that were utilized [101]. Right (a) Schematic representation of the Fano resonance-based biosensor suggested; (b) Effective refractive indices of graphene surface plasmon polariton (SPP) and planar waveguide (PWG) modes [103].
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Left (a) Schematic diagram of the proposed metal-insulator-metal (MIM) metasurface in the infrared region [181]. Right (b) Schematic diagram of the proposed plasmonic-graphene structure [182].
Fig. 6
Fig. 6
Top (a–b) Schematic diagram of the Fano resonant based all dielectric metasurface design [183]. Bottom (a–b) Schematic representation of a single cycle of the intended meta-structure, which consists of four silicon blocks shaped like sectors and a cross rod positioned on a silica substrate (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
Fig. 7
Fig. 7
Top (a) A schematic representation of a fabricated asymmetric ring/disc system; Bottom (b) A scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of the fabricated asymmetric ring/disc cavity [199].
Fig. 8
Fig. 8
(a) Distilled water-submerged left- and right-handed gold gammadion arrays, as well as circular dichroism spectra and SEM pictures of the matching chiral metamaterials (in the inserts). (b) The effects of thermally denatured absorbed proteins -lactoglobulin and -lactoglobulin on the CD spectra of chiral metamaterials. (The solid line represents left-handed chiral metamaterial; the dashed line represents right-handed metamaterial.) (c) A +60° twisted metamaterial SEM picture and schematic. (The red spectra were collected before protein adsorption in Tris solution, while the black spectra were collected after protein adsorption.) The CD spectra of the metamaterial in panel c functionalized with a monolayer of protein (Concanavalin A) for ±60° twisted metamaterials are shown in (d); (solid symbols signify +60° metamaterials, and empty symbols denote −60° metamaterials) (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Smith D.J., Padilla W.J., Vier D.C., Nemat-Nasser S., Schultz S. Composite medium with simultaneously negative permeability and permittivity. Phys. Rev. Lett. 2000;84(18):4184–4187. doi: 10.1103/physrevlett.84.4184. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Holloway C.L., Kuester E.F., Gordon J.I., O'Hara J.F., Booth J.T., Smith D.R. An overview of the theory and applications of metasurfaces the two-dimensional equivalents of metamaterials. IEEE Antenn. Propag. Mag. 2012;54(2):10–35. doi: 10.1109/map.2012.6230714. - DOI
    1. Yin S., Galiffi E., Alù A. Floquet metamaterials. eLight. 2022;2(1) doi: 10.1186/s43593-022-00015-1. - DOI
    1. Wen J., Ren Q., Ruiguang P., Yao H., Qing Y., Yin J., Zhao Q. Progress in water-based metamaterial absorbers a review. Opt. Mater. Express. 2022;12(4):1461. doi: 10.1364/ome.455723. - DOI
    1. Pendry J.B. Conference on Coherence and Quantum Optics. 2007. Metamaterials and the control of electromagnetic fields. - DOI

LinkOut - more resources