Effect of Semiconductor on Sensitivity of a Graphene-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor

Abstract

In this theoretical study, the effect of semiconductor on sensitivity of a graphene-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor has been presented. Different semiconductors such as silicon (Si), germanium (Ge) and wurtzite III-V nitrides (AlN, GaN and InN) have been placed in between active silver (Ag) metal and graphene layer. Our simulation result shows that addition of semiconductor layer enhances the sensitivity by a factor of 3.76, 2.19, 3.82, 3.94 and 4.17 respectively for Si, Ge, InN, GaN and AlN. Also, we have examined the field enhancement factor due to above semiconductors and found maximum field intensity enhancement for the case of AlN. The analysis shows that best performance is achieved for red He-Ne laser light when optimized thicknesses of silver, AlN and graphene layer are 55, 14 and 0.34 nm (monolayer of graphene), respectively. More specifically, AlN would be a better choice for biosensing application in SPR biosensor.

Effect of III-V nitrides on performance of graphene based SPR biosensor for detection of hemoglobin in human blood sample: A comparative analysis

“…However, when semiconductor layers (i.e silicon (Si), germanium (Ge) and iii-v nitrides) are introduced between metal and graphene layer, the overall sensitivity of the proposed sensor is further enhanced [12,34]. Keeping in mind all used semiconductor layers has been optimized.…”

“…The performance of SPR based sensor can be improved further by the introduction of iii-v nitride semiconductors (i.e. AlN, GaN or InN) in between metal and graphene layer [12][13][14]. From the experimental point of view, the graphene layer can be grown directly over the wurtzite nitrides [15,16].…”

Graphene–MoS2–metal hybrid structures for plasmonic biosensors

“…Despite being only a single atom thick 40 (∼0.34 nm), graphene has an excellent compatibility with nanofabrication, and therefore the potential applications of graphene are enormous, ranging from solar cells to optical modulators [14,15]. Recent researches have shown that graphene also can be used as a biomolecular recognition 45 element (BRE) in SPR biosensors due to its strong detection capability through π-stacking force between graphene and the carbon-based biomolecules [16,17,18,19,20,21]. However, Wu et al reported that the angular sensitivity of conventional metal (gold substrate) SPR sensors can 50 be improved by 25% with deposited 10 graphene layers, which is challenge at the moment for nanofabrication considering the number of layer [22].…”

Performance analysis of surface plasmon resonance sensor with high-order absentee layer *

“…As a valuable and standard analytical tool, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors are widely used in gas molecule detection, drug diagnostics and biosensing, [1][2][3] and the spectral range of its application extends from visible and infrared bands to terahertz band now. [4][5][6] The Kretschmann prism coupling configuration is a simple and useful configuration of the SPR sensor.…”

“…[10,11] To evaluate the performance of an SPR sensor, several performance parameters are generally used, such as the sensitivity (S), the full width at half maximum (FWHM), and the figure-of-merit (FOM). [2,11,12] The sensitivity is defined as the ratio between the shift of the resonance angle or wavelength and the change of the refractive index of analyte. [13] Many methods of improving the sensitivity were proposed recently, such as adding graphene and air gap, [14] dielectric layer [13,15] or semiconductor layer [16] in an SPR sensor.…”