Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor with High Sensitivity for Detecting SARS-CoV-2

This paper presents a novel surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor based on Kretchmann configuration for detection of SARS-CoV-2. The sensor incorporates barium titanate (BaTiO3) dielectric material on top of the metal as a 2D material, as well as tungsten disulfide (WS2) in addition to the prism/metal/sensing layer setup. To optimize the sensor's performance, the integration of emerging materials into conventional sensor structures was thoroughly examined, and key performance parameters were analyzed using the transfer matrix method (TMM) and Fresnel equations. The proposed sensor achieves exceptional angular sensitivity of 450 degrees/RIU, with a 3.5 degrees of full width at half maximum (FWHM) and a 128.57/RIU of figure of merit (FoM), thanks to the combination of BaTiO3 on silver (Ag) and WS2 on BaTiO3. The optimal configuration comprises one layer of WS2 in addition to the metal layer. We also analyzed the electric field of the proposed biosensor with finite element method-based software and demonstrated its potential for future research. Our SPR sensor provides increased sensitivity for detecting SARS-CoV-2 compared to other proposed SPR sensors in the literature. Patient samples have been successfully detected at an early stage of the disease due to the sensor's enhanced sensitivity.