Characterization of deep sub-wavelength nanowells by imaging the photon state scattering spectra

Optical-matter interactions and photon scattering in a sub-wavelength space are of great interest in many applications, such as nanopore-based gene sequencing and molecule characterization. Previous studies show that spatial distribution features of the scattering photon states are highly sensitive to the dielectric and structural properties of the nanopore array and matter contained on or within them, as a result of the complex optical-matter interaction in a confined system. In this paper, we report a method for shape characterization of subwavelength nanowells using photon state spatial distribution spectra in the scattering near field. Far-field parametric images of the near-field optical scattering from sub-wavelength nanowell arrays on a SiN substrate were obtained experimentally. Finite-difference time-domain simulations were used to interpret the experimental results. The rich features of the parametric images originating from the interaction of the photons and the nanowells were analyzed to recover the size of the nanowells. Experiments on nanoholes modified with Shp2 proteins were also performed. Results show that the scattering distribution of modified nanoholes exhibits significant differences compared to empty nanoholes. This work highlights the potential of utilizing the photon status scattering of nanowells for molecular characterization or other virus detection applications.