Laser nanostructuring for surface enhanced sensing: methods and applications

Formation of sub‐wavelength periodic surface structures ‐ ripples ‐ was studied in this work using ultra‐short laser pulses. Ripples are known from the first laser experiments however their formation mechanism is not well understood for the case of ultra‐short laser pulses. In this work the new mechanism uniting most experimental results obtained using ultra‐short pulses was proposed and validated. We have demonstrated that ripples can be used as an efficient label‐free sensing platform outperforming commercial analogues, which can be used for material science, biomedical sensing, chemical warfare agents and environmental monitoring. A quantitative label‐free detection of Amyloid−β protein, which is a biomarker for an early stage Alzheimer's disease, is demonstrated.