Plasmonic nanostructures with strong on-resonance local
electric
fields at the metal interfaces provide an excellent means for sensing
applications. However, most plasmonic resonances suffer from relatively
broad bandwidths, mainly due to the intrinsic material dissipation,
restricting the optical performances. Moreover, little attention is
paid on the radiation loss. In this work, we utilize quasi-guided
modes supported by a metallic disk array and demonstrate the manipulation
of radiation losses to further improve the resonance property. When
a relative angle is introduced between every two adjacent metallic
disks in a subwavelength-period array to form a zigzag metasurface,
the period doubles leading to a transition of the true guided modes
to be flipped above the light cone into the quasi-guided modes with
finite yet relatively high-quality factors. We demonstrate the application
of these quasi-guided modes with reduced bandwidths as refractive
index sensors. Our experiment demonstrates that a refractive index
sensitivity as high as 655 nm/RIU can be achieved with this structure,
which has a good agreement with the numerical results. This sensitivity
outperforms many other plasmonic sensors, e.g., those based on localized
surface plasmon resonances or detuned plasmonic resonators. The proposed
scheme of using quasi-guided modes as the refractive index sensor
provides a prospective platform for biological and chemical sensing.