A theoretical study of a plasmonic sensor comprising a gold nano-disk array on gold film with a SiO ₂ spacer

Abstract

A plasmonic refractive index (RI) sensor with high RI sensitivity based on a gold composite structure is proposed. This composite structure is constructed from a perfect gold nano-disk square array on a gold film, with a SiO 2 spacer. The reflection spectra of the composite structure, with analyte RI in the range of 1.30 to 1.40, are theoretically studied using the finite-difference time-domain method. The incident light beam is partly coupled to the localized surface plasmons (LSP) of the single nano-disks and partly transferred to the propagating surface plasmons (PSP) by grating coupling. The reflectivity is nearly zero at the valley of the reflection spectrum because of the strong coupling between LSP and PSP. Also, the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of one of the surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) modes is very narrow, which is helpful for RI sensing. An RI sensitivity as high as 853 nm/RIU is obtained. The influence of the structure parameters on the RI sensitivity and the sensor figure of merit (FOM) are investigated in detail. We find that the sensor maintains high RI sensitivity over a large range of periods and nano-disk diameters. Results of the theoretical simulation of the composite structure as a plasmonic sensor are promising. Thus, this composite structure could be extensively applied in the fields of biology and chemistry.

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