Simulation study to improve the sensitivity of surface plasmon resonance sensor by using ferric oxide, nickel and antimonene nanomaterials

Abstract

In the present paper, a simulation work has been done to study about a hypersensitive Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) based sensor device created by the angular interrogation method based on Attenuated Total Reflection (ATR) phenomenon. The numerical analysis has been done by the method of transfer matrix and a plane polarised source of light of wavelength 633 nm approx (632.8 nm wavelength of He-Ne laser) has been used. In this device configuration, glass prism of Calcium fluoride (CaF2) has been used with Silver (Ag) metal using Kretschmann configuration, a diamagnetic material nanosheets of ferric oxide (Fe2O3), nickel (Ni) and a 2D material antimonene is used as a polymeric structure. All the important performing parameters of SPR sensor such as sensitivity, detection accuracy, quality factor has been calculated for different device configuration of SPR sensor. Fe2O3 and Ag layer thickness has been optimized by using genetic algorithms to obtain the highest sensitivity. The configuration gives the highest sensitivity 310°RIU−1 of projected SPR sensor when sensing medium RI varies from 1.330 to 1.335. For proposed design of SPR sensor the sensitivity and FWHM are high as compared to the conventional SPR senor having FWHM value 3.4995 (deg.). For the proposed device configuration bilayer of Ni and antimonene has been used as a polymeric substance to improve the sensitivity and protect device from corrosion. Penetration depth value of 110.5 nm and 3D plot of transverse electric (TM) field intensity has also been plotted. The numerical simulation is based on transfer matrix method and Fresnel equations and the used softwares are MATLAB and COMSOL multiphysics software. The proposed SPR sensor helps to detect the liquid analytes in the field of biomedical and environmental application.