Fiber-based planar antennas for spectroscopy and sensing

Fluorescence detection is a well-established method for spectroscopy and sensing. However, since dye molecules are dipolar light sources, a large fraction of the emitted photons can be lost. An effective approach to overcome this problem relies on a planar antenna configuration, which beams the radiation pattern of the dye into a narrow cone. A planar antenna works like a Yagi-Uda antenna, but reflector and director elements are made of thin metal films. Here, by introducing a scanning optical fiber, which incorporates the reflector or the director, we demonstrate a tunable planar antenna for spectroscopic and sensing applications. Our results show that the radiation pattern narrows down to 26 degrees (FWHM), which implies a high collection efficiency by low-NA optics.