Liquid Crystal-Based Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor

Surface plasmon resonance has many applications in designing biosensors. In this paper, an easy fabrication liquid crystal-based surface plasmon resonance (LC-SPR) biosensor is simulated and presented which can determine reflectance and sensitivity via liquid crystal structure, gold structure, and silver structure. The powerful transfer matrix was applied for calculating the reflectance and sensitivity of the biosensor. The alignment of liquid crystal molecules and the concentration of biological analytes have a remarkable impact on biosensor's sensitivity enhancement. The results indicated that, after including analytes, the birefringence of liquid crystal changes; consequently, performance parameters are enhanced. Maximum performance parameters of the proposed LC-SPR biosensor obtained for the homogeneous condition of S = 0 and silver-based structure parameters are better than those of other structures.