Sensing through the optical radiation pattern in dielectric metastructures

Along with increasing demands and rapid development of nanotechnology in various fields, the combination of photonics, nano-optics, biology and chemistry opens new opportunities of developing optical sensors with subwavelength elements or micrometric structures. An innovative sensing mechanism based on the variations in the sensor radiation diagram in correspondence of changes in the refractive index of the surrounding material is illustrated. Particularly, we present a theoretical investigation of two different prototypes of dielectric structures for sensitive and compact chemical optical sensing through the radiation pattern.