Highly Sensitive TiO2/Au/Graphene Layer-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor for Cancer Detection

Abstract

In this article, a hybrid TiO2/Au/graphene layer-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor with improved sensitivity and capability for cancer detection is presented. The finite element method (FEM) was used for numerical analysis. The proposed SPR biosensor was structured based on the angular analysis of the attenuated total reflection (ATR) method for the detection of various types of cancer using the refractive index component. The resonance angle shifted owing to the increment of normal and cancerous cells’ refractive index, which varied between 1.36 and 1.401 for six different types of normal and cancerous cells. According to numerical results, the obtained sensitivities for skin (basal), cervical (HeLa), adrenal gland (PC12), blood (Jurkat), and breast (MCF-7 and MDA-MB-231) cancer cells were 210 deg/RIU, 245.83 deg/RIU, 264.285 deg/RIU, 285.71 deg/RIU, 292.86 deg/RIU, and 278.57 deg/RIU, respectively. Furthermore, the detection accuracy (DA), figure of merits (FOM), and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) were also obtained, with values of 0.263 deg−1, 48.02 RIU−1, and 3.84, respectively. Additionally, the distribution of the electric field and the propagation of the magnetic field for resonant and non-resonant conditions of the proposed structure were illustrated. It was found that an enhanced field was exhibited on the surface of the plasmonic material for resonant conditions. We also measured the penetration depth of 180 nm using decayed electric field intensity. Furthermore, the impact of using a TiO2/Au/graphene layer was demonstrated. We further conducted analyses of the effects of the thickness of the gold layer and the effects of additional graphene layers on overall sensitivities for six different types of cancer. The proposed TiO2/Au/graphene layered structure exhibited the highest overall sensitivity in terms of detecting cancerous cells from healthy cells. Moreover, the proposed sensor was numerically analyzed for a wide range of biological solutions (refractive index 1.33 –1.41), and the sensor linearity was calculated with a linear regression coefficient (R2) of 0.9858. Finally, numerical results obtained in this manuscript exhibited high sensitivity in comparison with previously reported studies.

A performance comparison of heterostructure surface plasmon resonance biosensor for the diagnosis of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

“…The electric field intensity approaches its maximum value when the reflectance curve shows the minimum value of reflectivity. It is one of the crucial elements for detecting the target analyte on the sensor surface (Mostufa et al 2022b ) and for the proposed configuration the intensified electric field is obtained. The electric field intensity and angle of incidence as a function of normal distance from the interface for each respective structure of SPR sensor have been plotted in Fig.…”

“…Recently SPR is one of the most promising and susceptible optical-based sensing devices which is used to identify SARS-CoV-2 viruses due to its very high sensitivity and more user-friendly mechanism (Talebian et al 2020 ; Akib et al 2021 ; Pandey et al 2022 ; Nor et al 2021 ; Lim et al 2021 ; Mostufa et al 2022a ; Maddali et al 2021 ; Chen et al 2021 ). Furthermore, this sensor has practically been implemented for multiple applications (Alharbi et al 2019 ; Nangare and Patil 2021 ; Mostufa et al 2021 , 2022 , 2022b ), for example (Chaudhary et al 2021 ; Thakallapelli et al 2016 ; Campbell and Kim 2007 ; Englebienne et al 2003 ; Kitenge et al 2009 ; Zhang et al 2007 ; Nielsen et al 2000 ). However, researchers are still working on the development of new structures and designs to form a sophisticated SPR sensor in different sensing applications (Zhang et al 2022 ; Eslami-Kaliji et al 2022 ).…”

Plasmonic Refractive Index Sensor Enhanced with Chitosan/Au Bilayer Thin Film for Dopamine Detection

“…Another important parameter for analyzing the sensor performance and quantifying its precision is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) which can be calculated as stated below [ 78 ]: …”

A Performance Comparison of Heterostructure Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor for the Diagnosis of Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2

“…The electric field intensity approaches its maximum value when the reflectance curve shows the minimum value of reflectivity. It is one of the crucial elements for detecting the target analyte on the sensor surface [21] and for the proposed configuration the intensified electric field is obtained. The electric field intensity and angle of incidence as a function of normal distance from the interface for each respective structure of SPR sensor have been plotted in Fig.…”