Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensors: Optimization of Diffraction Grating and Prism Couplers

W. Raja[1], A. Alabastri[1], S. Tuccio[1], R. Proietti Zaccaria[1]
[1]Department of Nanostructures, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova, Italy
Published in 2013

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors proved themselves as a promising device for many kinds of applications such as optical biosensing, binding constant determinationor nanofilm thickness measurements. Here we simulate using COMSOL Multiphysics® the light-polaritons coupling for the two most commonly used SPR setups: Attenuated total reflection (Kretschmann configuration) and diffraction gratings as shown in Figure 1. Furthermore, we illustrate a comprehensive designing rule to determine the parameters for optimizing the generation of surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) for the both setups i.e. grating couplers and Kretschmann configuration. Moreover, a computational analysis are demonstrated for three detection methods: Resonant angle, Resonant wavelength and Thickness of metal, in SPR sensors for both the SPR setups.

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