Abstract

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) was first identified in 1959 and has become a very sensitive technique for studying surface properties in physics, chemistry and biology [1, 2]. SPR sensors use transverse magnetic (TM) polarized waves to probe minor refractive index (RI) changes occurring at an interface between a metal film and a dielectric medium. For optical microscopy, SPR phenomena may be taken advantage of to increase the signal- to-noise ratio so as to benefit to the spatial resolution in imaging applications [3]. It has been reported that the use of a radial polarizer so as to enhance the generation of TM-polarized light is of interest for surface plasmon microscopy. In this report, demonstration was performed by scanning over a few scattering sources of sub micrometer size [4, 5]. In order to get a higher sensitivity studies for nanoparticles, we report here a new development of radially polarized surface plasmon microscopy with two detection channels for linear reflection and epifluorescence, as well as a modulation detection scheme based on an annular disc.

© 2009 IEEE