Patterned Fabrication of Dielectric Nanopillar Arrays for Single Molecule Spectroscopy Applications

The ability to guide and confine light on a scale much smaller than the wavelength of light opens up a variety of applications in fields including information processing, nanoscale imaging and lithography, and single molecule spectroscopy. For example, our previous studies have demonstrated the efficient guiding of visible light through 50-nm-diameter zinc oxide nanowire waveguides. However, the lengths of these zinc oxide nanowires are not well controlled due to the chemical synthesis method used, prohibiting their application in devices for single molecule spectroscopy. In this study, we use nanofabrication techniques to demonstrate the fabrication of titanium oxide nanopillars with controlled diameter and length. The use of these titanium oxide nanopillar waveguides for single molecule studies with fluorescence correlation spectroscopy at micromolar concentrations is probed and its application in studying the dynamics of protein molecules on cell membranes will be explored.