Abstract

A plethora of research in recent years has been reported on biosensing in the surface plasmon resonant systems. However, very little research has reported a tunable and highly sensitive biosensor in a nanoscale platform. In this regard, we propose a nanoscale hyperbolic metamaterial (HMM)-based prism coupled waveguide sensor (PCWS) in the near-infrared range. The HMM layer makes up one of the constituents of the PCWS—comprised of a periodically arranged assembly of silver nanostrips. The structure is numerically simulated by the finite difference time domain method. It is demonstrated that the sensitivity of the reflected light can be tuned through the refractive index (RI) of the solution. Moreover, the effects of alteration of constituents of PCWS on the sensitivity have been analyzed. Results show that the sensitivity of PCWS can be harnessed by altering the thickness, slant angle of HMM layer, volume fraction ($f$) of metal in the HMM layer, and the incidence angle of light. For this purpose, the structure is numerically simulated by the finite difference time domain method. In the optimum design of the proposed sensor, the maximum value of sensitivity is achieved as high as $S=3450\mathrm{nm}/\text{refractive}$ index unit with $\theta =10°$ and $\varphi =10°$ and a metamaterial thickness of 250 nm. Moreover, the structure has a nanoscale footprint of $600\mathrm{nm}\times 400\mathrm{nm}\times 200\mathrm{nm}$.

© 2018 Optical Society of America

Highly sensitive plasmonic nanorod hyperbolic metamaterial biosensor

Ruoqin Yan, Tao Wang, Xinzhao Yue, Huimin Wang, Yu-Hui Zhang, Peng Xu, Lu Wang, Yuandong Wang, and Jinyan Zhang
Photon. Res. 10(1) 84-95 (2022)

Highly sensitive short-range mode resonance sensor with multilayer structured hyperbolic metamaterials

Zhiqi Li, Yizhuo Zhang, Xiaowan Guo, Chenghao Tong, Xiaoying Chen, Yu Zeng, Jian Shen, and Chaoyang Li
Opt. Express 31(3) 3520-3535 (2023)

Nanostructured graphene-based hyperbolic metamaterial performing as a wide-angle near infrared electro-optical switch

Maziar Shoaei, Mohammad Kazem Moravvej-Farshi, and Leila Yousefi
Appl. Opt. 54(5) 1206-1211 (2015)

Enhanced sensitivity of a surface plasmon resonance biosensor using hyperbolic metamaterial and monolayer graphene

Jinjuan Gao, Qun Zu, Shicai Xu, Wen Yang, Jingwen Feng, Runcheng Liu, Zhipeng Zha, Qianqian Peng, Weiwei Yue, Yanyan Huo, Shouzhen Jiang, and Xiuwei Fan
Opt. Express 29(26) 43766-43777 (2021)

Sensitivity enhancement of a fiber plasmonic sensor based on rolled-up Ag/TiO₂ hyperbolic metamaterials

Jun Li, Hao Li, Yujia Zhao, Peizhen Jiang, Jiaxin Liu, Mingjing Xu, and Ai Zhou
J. Opt. Soc. Am. B 38(11) 3403-3409 (2021)