Enhanced SPR-Based Localized and Bulk Sensing Using a Plasmonic Nanopillar Array With Spacer

We report a substantially improved localized and bulk sensing response of a plasmonic sensor based on a plasmonic nanopillar array spacer-separated from a plasmonic thin film and operated using the conventional Kretschmann configuration. This paper describes theoretical investigations of the spectral and angular interrogation of the proposed sensors to determine the spectral or angular reflectivity minima. Shifts in the reflectivity minima are determined to obtain information on perturbations in localized (local binding analyte layer sensing) and bulk refractive index (bulk medium sensing) on the sensor surface. Optimization of the structural parameters of the proposed sensor yields a highly enhanced sensor performance, with an extremely high sensitivity (9920 nm RIU−1) and figure of merit (58.2 RIU−1) for bulk sensing response, as well as extremely high sensitivity (76 nm/nm) and figure of merit (0.5 nm−1) for localized sensing response upon spectral interrogation of the sensor. The localized surface sensitivity for the proposed sensor, which is evaluated to be 76 nm/nm, is higher than what has been reported till now. The proposed sensors do not require any sophisticated optical set-ups and can be implemented on the optical setups used for the conventional Kretschmann configuration based sensors. The proposed sensor design could easily be fabricated using the state-of-the-art top-down nanofabrication approaches and could be employed for developing highly sensitive biosensing platforms.