Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Probing Trapped Extracellular Vesicles By Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy, Lauren Kaufman

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are released by nearly all cell types within the human body and have been found to play important biological roles including cell-to-cell communication, apoptosis and tissue repair. Lacking cellular machinery, these nano-sized vesicles carry functional proteins and nucleic acids from their parent cells, providing insight into biomarkers present in healthy, cancerous and diseased cells. EVs may be isolated from biofluids such as from blood or urine. Their detection and characterization holds extreme potential in developing less invasive disease detection and treatment methods.

In this work, we propose use of lithographic techniques to fabricate platforms to allow for …

Compact Sensing Platforms Based On Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance, Zhutian Ding

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

The development of plasmonic sensors mainly focuses on the improvement of their sensitivities that are approaching the theoretical limit. This work aims to propose, fabricate and characterize compact sensing platforms that are highly adaptable and easy to be miniaturized, without compromising their sensitivities. A plasmonic sensing system that allows the excitation of localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) by individual waveguide modes is presented conceptually and experimentally. Another compact sensing platform is proposed based on the ensemble hypothesis developed in this thesis.