Two-dimensional material-enhanced surface plasmon resonance for antibiotic sensing

Abstract

Two-dimensional (2D) materials attract attention from the academic community due to their excellent properties, and their wide application in sensing is expected to revolutionize environmental monitoring, medical diagnostics, and food safety. In this work, we systematically evaluate the effects of 2D materials on the Au chip surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor. The results reveal that 2D materials cannot improve the sensitivity of intensity-modulated SPR sensors. However, there exists an optimal real part of RI of 3.5–4.0 and optimal thickness when choosing nanomaterials for sensitivity enhancement of SPR sensors in angular modulation. In addition, the smaller the imaginary part of the nanomaterial RI, the higher the sensitivity of the proposed Au SPR sensor. The 2D material’s thickness needed for the highest sensitivity decreases with increasing real part and imaginary part of the RI. As a case study, we developed a 5 nm-thickness MoS2-enhanced SPR biosensor, which exhibited a low sulfonamides (SAs) detection limit of 0.05 μg/L based on a group-targeting indirect competitive immunoassay, nearly 12-fold lower than that of the bare Au SPR system. The proposed criteria help to shed light on the 2D material-Au surface interaction, which has greatly promoted the development of novel SPR biosensing with outstanding sensitivity.