Sensitivity Enhancement of a Surface Plasmon Resonance with Tin Selenide (SnSe) Allotropes.

Single layers of tin selenide (SnSe), which have a similar structure as graphene and phosphorene, also show excellent optoelectronic properties, and have received much attention as a two-dimensional (2D) material beyond other 2D material family members. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors based on three monolayer SnSe allotropes are investigated with the transfer matrix method. The simulated results have indicated that the proposed SnSe-containing biochemical sensors are suitable to detect different types of analytes. Compared with the conventional Ag-only film biochemical sensor whose sensitivity is 116°/RIU, the sensitivities of these SnSe-based biochemical sensors containing α-SnSe, δ-SnSe, ε-SnSe, were obviously increased to 178°/RIU, 156°/RIU and 154°/RIU, respectively. The diverse biosensor sensitivities achieved with these three SnSe allotropes suggest that these 2D materials can adjust SPR sensor properties.

Fano Resonance in Waveguide Coupled Surface Exciton Polaritons: Theory and Application in Biosensor.

Surface exciton polaritons (SEPs) are one of the three major elementary excitations: Phonons, plasmons and excitons. They propagate along the interface of the crystal and dielectric medium. Surface exciton polaritons hold a significant position in the aspect of novel sensor and optical devices. In this article, we have realized a sharp Fano resonance (FR) by coupling the planar waveguide mode (WGM) and SEP mode with Cytop (perfluoro (1-butenyl vinyl ether)) and J-aggregate cyanine dye. After analyzing the coupling mechanism and the localized field enhancement, we then applied our structure to the imaging biosensor. It was shown that the maximum imaging sensitivity of this sensor could be as high as 5858 RIU-1, which is more than three times as much as classical FR based on metal. A biosensor with ultra-high sensitivity, simple manufacturing technique and lower cost with J-aggregate cyanine dye provides us with the most appropriate substitute for the surface plasmon resonance sensors with the noble metals and paves the way for applications in new sensing technology and biological studies.