Here we present design and fabrication of dielectric and plasmonic surfaces and several of their applications in biomolecular sensing. First, a metal-insulator-metal plasmonic surface is presented as a broad band absorber and field enhancer that finds application in Surface enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (SERS). Self-assembled silver nanoislands are formed on a silver reflector with a dielectric spacer in a lithography free process, and allows single molecule level SERS enhancements, resulting in observation of single molecules on a Mobile phone. Another example of plasmonic biosensing is grating coupled plasmonic surfaces for label-free biosensing. Using optical BluRay discs as a template, such plasmonic surfaces are shown to enable plasmonic imaging and multiplex sensing on a Mobile phone, using a custom designed attachment. Also, a plasmonic configuration that is inherently insensitive to the background refractive index is presented.
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