Tapering to Enhance the Performance of Nanowire-Based Fluorescent Biosensors
Abstract
High-refractive-index nanowires are of interest for signal enhancement in fluorescence-based biosensing. Here, through electromagnetic modelling, we demonstrate substantial fluorescence signal enhancement by incorporating a tapered section into a cylindrical nanowire and investigate two complementary tapering configurations to address practical implementation challenges. Under near-normal excitation, the excitation enhancement increases approximately linearly with taper length, reaching more than three times that of the corresponding non-tapered nanowire at a taper length of 8000 nm. In a non-imaging signal detection scheme using a low numerical aperture (NA), the proposed tapered nanowire achieves more than three orders of magnitude enhancement in fluorescence signal compared with a planar biosensor. Thus, the tapered nanowire should enable efficient fluorescence detection using compact, low-NA optical configuration. In imaging mode, similarly as for non-tapered nanowires, imaging sharpness beyond conventional microscopy limitations is obtained when imaging from the non-tapered nanowire end, while strongly increased excitation enhancement is simultaneously obtained when exciting from the opposite, tapered end.
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BibTeX
@misc{mou2026tapering,
title = {{Tapering to Enhance the Performance of Nanowire-Based Fluorescent Biosensors}},
author = {Farhana Akter Mou and Nicklas Anttu},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.35791},
eprint = {2610.35791},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.35791},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Tapering to Enhance the Performance of Nanowire-Based Fluorescent Biosensors
AU - Farhana Akter Mou
AU - Nicklas Anttu
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/26
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.35791
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.35791
AB - High-refractive-index nanowires are of interest for signal enhancement in fluorescence-based biosensing. Here, through electromagnetic modelling, we demonstrate substantial fluorescence signal enhancement by incorporating a tapered section into a cylindrical nanowire and investigate two complementary tapering configurations to address practical implementation challenges. Under near-normal excitation, the excitation enhancement increases approximately linearly with taper length, reaching more than three times that of the corresponding non-tapered nanowire at a taper length of 8000 nm. In a non-imaging signal detection scheme using a low numerical aperture (NA), the proposed tapered nanowire achieves more than three orders of magnitude enhancement in fluorescence signal compared with a planar biosensor. Thus, the tapered nanowire should enable efficient fluorescence detection using compact, low-NA optical configuration. In imaging mode, similarly as for non-tapered nanowires, imaging sharpness beyond conventional microscopy limitations is obtained when imaging from the non-tapered nanowire end, while strongly increased excitation enhancement is simultaneously obtained when exciting from the opposite, tapered end.
ER -