Designing high sensitivity surface plasmon resonance sensor using a left-handed material layer

Abstract

In this contribution, we propose a new plasmonic configuration that can be functionalized in two wavelength regimes to generate a single interface mode or multiple interface modes. The structure comprises a negative metamaterial or Left-Handed Material (LHM) coated on 2S2G-glass prism and adjacent with a sensing medium. According to the results, the negative metamaterial thickness affects significantly the potential of the structure to operate as conventional plasmonic structured formed by Fabry-Perot cavities. Additionally, we, also show that the structure can be used as a plasmonic refractive index sensor defined in the range of 1 to 1.53 refractive index unit (RIU) where the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the SPR curve on the characteristic’s manipulation such that FWHM of p-reflectivity decreases for thick LHM layer. To understand the obtained results, the optical response from the proposed waveguide was numerically predicted by the use of the transfer matrix method (TMM) and Fresnel’s theory. In addition, the potentials of the designed waveguide as an optical modulator and Fabry-Perot interferometer are also presented.