Abstract
Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)-based sensors have the advantage of being label-free, enzyme-free and real-time. However, their spreading in multidisciplinary research is still mostly limited to prism-coupled devices. Plasmonic gratings, combined with a simple and cost-effective instrumentation, have been poorly developed compared to prism-coupled system mainly due to their lower sensitivity. Here we describe the optimization and signal enhancement of a sensing platform based on phase-interrogation method, which entails the exploitation of a nanostructured sensor. This technique is particularly suitable for integration of the plasmonic sensor in a lab-on-a-chip platform and can be used in a microfluidic chamber to ease the sensing procedures and limit the injected volume. The careful optimization of most suitable experimental parameters by numerical simulations leads to a 30–50% enhancement of SPR response, opening new possibilities for applications in the biomedical research field while maintaining the ease and versatility of the configuration.
Highlights
Biosensing, the detection of an analyte through the interaction between a biological ligand and a physical transducer, is a primary target of multidisciplinary scientific and technological research [1,2,3,4].With advances in photonics, a large variety of optical methods have been applied to biosensing including spectroscopy, microscopy and plasmonic resonance
A large variety of optical methods have been applied to biosensing including spectroscopy, microscopy and plasmonic resonance
A well-established approach to optical biosensing is that based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR), the resonant excitation of electromagnetic modes called Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPP), supported by metal–dielectric interfaces and consisting of electromagnetic waves coupled to conduction electrons collective oscillations [8,9,10,11]
Summary
Biosensing, the detection of an analyte through the interaction between a biological ligand and a physical transducer, is a primary target of multidisciplinary scientific and technological research [1,2,3,4].With advances in photonics, a large variety of optical methods have been applied to biosensing including spectroscopy, microscopy and plasmonic resonance. A well-established approach to optical biosensing is that based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR), the resonant excitation of electromagnetic modes called Surface Plasmon Polaritons (SPP), supported by metal–dielectric interfaces and consisting of electromagnetic waves coupled to conduction electrons collective oscillations [8,9,10,11]. SPR-based sensors are widely appreciated because they allow for label-free, real-time detection and can be implemented in cost-effectively integrated devices [12,13,14,15]. The first approach to provide coupling between incident light and SPP for SPR biosensing is by a prism; this is still the most widely used method in commercial SPR devices due to its high sensitivity
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