Dielectric Metal-Based Multilayers for Surface Plasmon Resonance with Enhanced Quality Factor of the Plasmonic Waves

Abstract

We present improved quality factors of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in a prism-based Kratschman configuration by using double the number of metal–dielectric layers for extended long-range surface plasmon. These multilayers lead to the coupling of multi-plasmonic waves for enhanced depth-to-width ratio (Γ) of the SPR dip of the reflectance curve. We use a transfer matrix approach to numerically simulate the curve of reflectance versus incident angle with each layer thickness optimized. We find that the four layers comprising doubled Teflon-Ag multilayers produce Γ higher than a single layer of Ag by a factor of about 122. These enhanced Γ (related to enhanced quality factor of the SPR wave) that lead to enlarged depth of SPR evanescent field penetration, can readily find applications in fluorescence detection with its efficiency elevated, which is required for fluorescence-based assays where weak fluorescent signals are expected, such as biological diagnosis that uses small volumes of liquid containing fluorescent dyes.