Resolution enhancement of optical surface plasmon resonance sensor using metamaterial

Sarika Pal,J P Saini,V Singh,Y K Prajapati

doi:10.1007/s13320-015-0269-5

Abstract

In this paper, we present and discuss a path to extend the enhancement of the resolution of an optical surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. Basically, our approach is to combine bi-metamaterial layers to design the SPR sensor. The calculation shows that the proposed SPR sensor structure has a preference over the conventional SPR sensors and bimetallic SPR sensors since it gives a much sharper reflectance dip and can achieve considerable sensitivity improvement when compared to the recently reported investigations. The effects of the metamaterial permittivity, permeability, and thickness on the reflectance curve are studied. It is also seen that metamaterial layers improve the field of the proposed SPR structure, which may provide a novel tool to significantly enhance the sensitivity and resolution of the sensors.

Highlights

IntroductionSarika PAL et al.: Resolution Enhancement of Optical Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor Using Metamaterial fluorescent tagging, when a quantitative label-free approach to tracking binding occurrences or optical property shifts over time is needed [4]
Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors provide label free and real-time analysis of optical property changes near a metal-dielectric interface that supports surface plasmons [1]
The use of the metamaterial layer is confirmed to have an advantage of increasing the reflectance dip of the optical SPR sensor, improving the sensitivity in term of the sensing resolution and dynamic range over the bi-metallic SPR sensor [21]

Summary

Introduction

Sarika PAL et al.: Resolution Enhancement of Optical Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor Using Metamaterial fluorescent tagging, when a quantitative label-free approach to tracking binding occurrences or optical property shifts over time is needed [4]. Metamaterials can exhibit a strong localization and enhancement of fields so that these can be used to improve the sensor selectivity of detecting nonlinear substances and to enable detection of extremely small amounts of analytes [18] Based on these properties, many new or improved applications of metamaterials have been proposed recently. The use of a silver (Ag) inner coupling layer between the prism and the dielectric waveguide film was confirmed to have advantages in enhancing the sharpness of SPR curves as well as improving the sensing resolution and dynamic range. The use of the metamaterial layer is confirmed to have an advantage of increasing the reflectance dip of the optical SPR sensor, improving the sensitivity in term of the sensing resolution and dynamic range over the bi-metallic SPR sensor [21].

Theoretical modeling

Numerical results and discussion

Metamaterial layer Dilectric layer

Conclusions