A custom CMOS camera for sensitive SPR measurement

In surface plasmon imaging, a sample is placed on a glass prism that has been coated with a metal film, usually gold. When illuminated at the appropriate angle, plasmons are generated in the gold surface and there is both a sharp dip in the reflectivity of the gold and a strong phase shift in the reflected light. The plasmon angle is very sensitive to the conditions on the gold surface, which makes it potentially very useful in label-free biological measurements, where the amount of a particular protein in a sample can be determined by how much binds to antibodies printed on the gold surface and changes the local surface properties.