Dielectric nanocavity-coupled surface lattice resonances for high-efficiency plasmonic sensing

Surface lattice resonances (SLRs) arising in metal nanostructure arrays have shown tremendous application prospects in the field of plasmonic biosensing. However, these SLRs still suffer from poor optical properties, such as broad linewidth or weak resonance intensity that is especially excited under normal incidence and asymmetric environments, which hinder further practical applications. Herein, we theoretically propose an effective strategy to tailor the SLRs performance of metal nanostructure arrays by introducing a dielectric nanocavity. Originating from the strong interference between the in-plane lattice resonance mode and plasmonic gap cavity modes, the dielectric nanocavity-mediated gold nanostructure arrays exhibit both narrow spectral features with a linewidth of similar to 8.2 nm and strong resonance intensity with absorbance amplitude exceeding 95%, even though under normal incidence and asymmetric environment excitation. The simulation results then show that the sensitivity and the figure of merit can reach up to 527.5 nm RIU-1 and 64.3, respectively, as for plasmonic refractive index sensing. This work not only paves the way toward the achievement of effective control of in-plane SLRs, but also provides a potentially attractive candidate for the development of high-efficiency plasmonic sensors.