Theoretical study of surface plasmon resonance sensors based on 2D bimetallic alloy grating

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on 2D alloy grating with a high performance is proposed. The grating consists of homogeneous alloys of formula M chi Ag1-chi where M is gold, copper, platinum and palladium. Compared to the SPR sensors based a pure metal, the sensor based on angular interrogation with silver exhibits a sharper (i.e. larger depth-to-width ratio) reflectivity dip, which provides a big detection accuracy, whereas the sensor based on gold exhibits the broadest dips and the highest sensitivity. The detection accuracy of SPR sensor based a metal alloy is enhanced by the increase of silver composition. In addition, the composition of silver which is around 0.8 improves the sensitivity and the quality of SPR sensor of pure metal. Numerical simulations based on rigorous coupled wave analysis (RCWA) show that the sensor based on a metal alloy not only has a high sensitivity and a high detection accuracy, but also exhibits a good linearity and a good quality. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.