A Biosensor Based on Bound States in the Continuum and Fano Resonances in a Solid–Liquid–Solid Triple Layer

Abstract

We propose a simple solid–liquid–solid triple layer biosensor platform based on bound states in the continuum (BICs) and Fano resonances to detect the acoustic properties of liquids and apply the method to a mixture of water and albumin with various concentrations. The solid–liquid–solid triple layer is composed of an epoxy as a solid layer and an albumin–water mixture as a liquid layer, and the entire system is immersed in water. In this work, we show that the structure exhibits a high sensitivity (S), quality factor (Q), and figure of merit (FOM) with a better detection limit (DL) in the vicinity of the BICs where the transmission spectra exhibit Fano resonances. The Fano resonances shift towards high frequencies as the concentration increases. The detection limit can reach very small values for a small albumin concentration (4.7%). In addition, for a given concentration and layer thickness of the sensing material, we show the effect of the incidence angle on the efficiency of the sensor in terms of the sensitivity and quality factor. The proposed structure can be designed from low-cost material and can be used as a sensor to detect different types of liquids and gases as well.

Two Individual Super-Bound State Modes within Band Gap with Ultra-High Q Factor for Potential Sensing Applications in the Terahertz Wave Band

“…In recent years, BICs were well explored in the literature for sensors in different structures, such as photonic crystals [ 7 , 18 , 19 ], metasurfaces [ 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 , 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 , 32 , 33 , 34 , 35 ], and gratings [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 ]. These BIC sensors have different uses, for instance, refractive index sensing [ 7 , 25 , 28 , 30 , 36 , 39 , 40 ], biosensing [ 20 , 34 , 41 , 42 ], and gas detection [ 37 ], ranging from visible [ 37 ] to infrared [ 23 , 33 , 38 , 39 ] to THz [ 21 , 22 , 29 , 31 , 35 , 43 ] regions.…”