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Design Analysis of Refractive Index Sensor with High Quality Factor Using Au-Al2O3 Grating on Aluminum

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Abstract

We propose a surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based refractive index sensor using gold-alumina grating over aluminum film for biosensing. Conventional SPR sensor based on gold grating exhibits broader SPR dips whereas that based on aluminum grating exhibits narrow reflection dip. A narrow reflection dip is desirable as it provides good resolution and improves the accuracy of measurement. Aluminum is less stable and generally is not preferred for an SPR-based sensor. It is more prone to being oxidized, which reduces the sensitivity and increases the width of the reflection dip of the sensor. While gold cannot provide narrow SPR reflection dips, but is used as an SPR active metal due to its more chemical stability. In order to improve the accuracy of gold grating-based sensor while taking care of oxidation problem of aluminum, in this paper, we propose a gold grating over aluminum film for SPR-based sensor and show that this configuration improves the sensitivity and the detection accuracy of the conventional sensor. Moreover, the oxidation problem is reduced to some extent as a part of aluminum is covered with gold. In order to completely avoid the oxidation of aluminum, we further propose to cover the exposed part of the aluminum with alumina and show that this configuration further improves the accuracy by reducing the width of the SPR reflection dip without affecting the sensitivity significantly. Numerical simulations show that sensitivity of proposed sensor is 270.33°/RIU with quality factor of more than 267.65 RIU−1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, 247667, India

    Ashish Bijalwan & Vipul Rastogi

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  1. Ashish Bijalwan
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  2. Vipul Rastogi
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Correspondence to Ashish Bijalwan.

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Bijalwan, A., Rastogi, V. Design Analysis of Refractive Index Sensor with High Quality Factor Using Au-Al2O3 Grating on Aluminum. Plasmonics 13, 1995–2000 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-018-0715-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11468-018-0715-5

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