Predicting the Performance of Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensors Based on Anisotropic Substrates

Abstract

The aim is to investigate how the sensing features of a surface plasmon resonance sensor based on the Kretschmann configuration are affected when the optical substrate is an anisotropic medium. The investigation considers the use of two different uniaxial anisotropic crystals, one made of barium titanate and another made of lithium niobate, as the optical substrate. It also considered that the sensor operates in the angular interrogation mode at the gold–water interface. The Fresnel equations and the finite element method were employed to determine the sensing features. The present study revealed that both formulations provide almost identical results for the resonance angle (difference less than 1%). On the other hand, the two formulations provide results with significant differences for additional features like the sensitivity and the full width at half maximum.