Thesis presented December 14, 2017
Abstract: This Ph.D. thesis focuses on the design of an original “lab-on-fiber” tool for remote, label-free in vivo molecular analysis that could be dedicated in the future to endoscopic diagnosis. Our approach is based on functionalized microstructured optical fiber bundles. When appropriately designed and covered by a gold layer, those fibers exhibit interesting plasmonic properties. First, the numerical model used to reach a better understanding of the physical phenomena involved in the optimization of the sensor’s sensitivity is explained. The simulations based on ray optics were then used to optimize the fiber tip geometry and gold coating thickness to enhance the analytical performances and ultimately allow biochemical detections. The fabrication process of the sensor is then explained going from the chemical etching done by the ISM team (Bordeaux) to the metallization of the tips performed at the CEA Grenoble. A comparison between theoretical and experimental behaviors is then conducted to assess the influence of the heterogeneity of both the gold deposit and the etched surfaces on the optical sensitivity. Afterwards, we take advantage of those optical properties to perform remote biochemical analysis. This was achieved in two steps: we first proved that our sensor was sensitive to local optical index variations by detecting the adsorption of a thin self-assembled organic layer and ultimately a specific interaction between two complementary DNA strands was monitored. The last part of this work tackles the more difficult aspects of the few-modes fibers composing the bundle. Waveguide theory is then used to explain the influence of the modal characteristics of light propagation on the optical fibers responses.
Keywords: Biosensors, Plasmons, SPR, Optical fibers, Multiplexing, Biochip
On-line thesis.