scholarly journals Ultrasensitive Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor Using Blue Phosphorus–Graphene Architecture

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (11) ◽  
pp. 3326
Author(s):  
Keyi Li ◽  
Lintong Li ◽  
Nanlin Xu ◽  
Xiao Peng ◽  
Yingxin Zhou ◽  
...  

This study theoretically proposed a novel surface plasmon resonance biosensor by incorporating emerging two dimensional material blue phosphorus and graphene layers with plasmonic gold film. The excellent performances employed for biosensing can be realized by accurately tuning the thickness of gold film and the number of blue phosphorus interlayer. Our proposed plasmonic biosensor architecture designed by phase modulation is much superior to angular modulation, providing 4 orders of magnitude sensitivity enhancement. In addition, the optimized stacked configuration is 42 nm Au film/2-layer blue phosphorus /4-layer graphene, which can produce the sharpest differential phase of 176.7661 degrees and darkest minimum reflectivity as low as 5.3787 × 10−6. For a tiny variation in local refractive index of 0.0012 RIU (RIU, refractive index unit) due to the binding interactions of aromatic biomolecules, our proposed biosensor can provide an ultrahigh detection sensitivity up to 1.4731 × 105 °/RIU, highly promising for performing ultrasensitive biosensing application.

Biosensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (11) ◽  
pp. 455
Author(s):  
Wei Du ◽  
Lucas Miller ◽  
Feng Zhao

A new waveguide-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor was proposed and investigated by numerical simulation. The sensor consists of a graphene cover layer, a gold (Au) thin film, and a silicon carbide (SiC) waveguide layer on a silicon dioxide/silicon (SiO2/Si) substrate. The large bandgap energy of SiC allows the sensor to operate in the visible and near-infrared wavelength ranges, which effectively reduces the light absorption in water to improve the sensitivity. The sensor was characterized by comparing the shift of the resonance wavelength peak with change of the refractive index (RI), which mimics the change of analyte concentration in the sensing medium. The study showed that in the RI range of 1.33~1.36, the sensitivity was improved when the graphene layers were increased. With 10 graphene layers, a sensitivity of 2810 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) was achieved, corresponding to a 39.1% improvement in sensitivity compared to the Au/SiC sensor without graphene. These results demonstrate that the graphene/Au/SiC waveguide SPR sensor has a promising use in portable biosensors for chemical and biological sensing applications, such as detection of water contaminations (RI = 1.33~1.34), hepatitis B virus (HBV), and glucose (RI = 1.34~1.35), and plasma and white blood cells (RI = 1.35~1.36) for human health and disease diagnosis.


Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (17) ◽  
pp. 3666 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bin Li ◽  
Tonglei Cheng ◽  
Junxin Chen ◽  
Xin Yan

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) liquid refractive index sensor based on photonic crystal fiber (PCF) is proposed. The PCF is made of the exposed core structure, and the gold film is formed by electron beam evaporation within its defects. The sensitivity of the sensor is improved by coating graphene on the surface of the gold film. The experimental results show that the sensitivity of the sensor is increased by 390 nm/RIU after the introduction of graphene, and finally to 2290 nm/RIU. The experiment and simulation have a good consistency. Significantly, the sensor can be reused, and the measurement accuracy can be maintained.


2016 ◽  
Vol 138 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinaykumar Konduru ◽  
Dong Hwan Shin ◽  
Jeffrey S. Allen ◽  
Chang Kyoung Choi ◽  
Seong Hyuk Lee ◽  
...  

Drop condensation and coalescence is visualized using high-speed Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) reflectance microscopy. SPR microscopy is a label-free technique that can characterize thin films (less than 1µm) by detecting the changes in the refractive index of the test medium. The sensing surface is a 50 nm thick gold film on a 2.5 nm thick Ti layer is deposited on a borosilicate substrate. P-polarized monochromatic light (632 nm) is incident on the gold film in a total internal reflection mode. Free electrons in the gold film are excited by the incident light when a resonance condition is met. The result is a decrease in the reflected intensity. Resonance depends upon wavelength, incident angle, and refractive index of prism and test medium. To induce condensation, a water bridge is created between the SPR gold film and an ITO coated glass slide. When the ITO coated slide is heated water evaporates from the bridge and condenses on the gold film. The sequence of images on the process of droplet deposition and drop coalescence are captured at 1500 frames per second. Experiments were conducted at an SPR angle of 44o, which is slightly above the minimum intensity angle for air at 43.8o. Therefore, the brightest and darkest regions correspond to the areas on the gold film covered with bulk water and a very thin film of water, respectively. The thickness of the film is proportional to the intensity of reflected light.


Photonics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 41
Author(s):  
Najat Andam ◽  
Siham Refki ◽  
Hidekazu Ishitobi ◽  
Yasushi Inouye ◽  
Zouheir Sekkat

The determination of optical constants (i.e., real and imaginary parts of the complex refractive index (nc) and thickness (d)) of ultrathin films is often required in photonics. It may be done by using, for example, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) spectroscopy combined with either profilometry or atomic force microscopy (AFM). SPR yields the optical thickness (i.e., the product of nc and d) of the film, while profilometry and AFM yield its thickness, thereby allowing for the separate determination of nc and d. In this paper, we use SPR and profilometry to determine the complex refractive index of very thin (i.e., 58 nm) films of dye-doped polymers at different dye/polymer concentrations (a feature which constitutes the originality of this work), and we compare the SPR results with those obtained by using spectroscopic ellipsometry measurements performed on the same samples. To determine the optical properties of our film samples by ellipsometry, we used, for the theoretical fits to experimental data, Bruggeman’s effective medium model for the dye/polymer, assumed as a composite material, and the Lorentz model for dye absorption. We found an excellent agreement between the results obtained by SPR and ellipsometry, confirming that SPR is appropriate for measuring the optical properties of very thin coatings at a single light frequency, given that it is simpler in operation and data analysis than spectroscopic ellipsometry.


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