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Improving Plasmon Sensing Performance by Exploiting the Spatially Confined Field

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Abstract

A universal method for improving sensing performance has been computationally studied based on a common triple-layer metal-dielectric-metal (MDM) plasmonic perfect absorber (PA). Calculation results show that the originally idled resonant optical field in the middle dielectric spacer can be exploited to enhance the sensing capability via etching the dielectric spacer to open a channel for analyte. By comparing with the sensitivity (S) of the common PA-based sensor, an enhancement factor up to 5.0 can be achieved for an etched PA-based sensor. Moreover, in order to maintain the mechanical stability of the structure, a modified PA-based sensor platform with a solid support for the suspended plasmonic disks array was further employed to study the sensing properties. In comparison with the referenced sensor without suspension technique, all the three sensing factors of the S, the figure of merit (FOM), and the spectral intensity difference related figure of merit (FOM*) are noticeably improved with the enhancement factors up to 2.5, 3, and 57, respectively. In addition, since there is no special dealing with the structure except the need of hollowing the dielectric spacer to open the sensing channel for the analysis, the predicted method profiles itself as a simple and universal strategy to improve the sensing performance of a wide variety of nanoplasmonic sensors.

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Abbreviations

LSPR:

Localized surface plasmon resonance

MDM:

Metal-dielectric-metal

PA:

Perfect absorber

FOM:

Figure of merit

FWHM:

Full-width at half-maximum

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant 11464019 and 11264017), Natural Science Foundation of Jiangxi Province (Grant 20142BAB212001), Young Scientist development program of Jiangxi Province (Grant 20142BCB23008).

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials and Sensors, Institute of Optoelectronic Materials and Technology, College of Physics and Communication Electronics, Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic and Telecommunication of Jiangxi, Jiangxi Normal University, Nanchang, 330022, China

    Zhengqi Liu, Guiqiang Liu, Xiaoshan Liu, Shan Huang, Pingping Pan, Yan Wang, Chengwu Zou & Gang Gu

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  1. Zhengqi Liu
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  2. Guiqiang Liu
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  3. Xiaoshan Liu
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  4. Shan Huang
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  6. Yan Wang
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  7. Chengwu Zou
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  8. Gang Gu
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Correspondence to Zhengqi Liu or Gang Gu.

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Liu, Z., Liu, G., Liu, X. et al. Improving Plasmon Sensing Performance by Exploiting the Spatially Confined Field. Plasmonics 11, 29–36 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-015-0017-0

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