Optical multilayers for LED-based surface plasmon resonance sensors

We address a structure for surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing supporting a symmetric bound surface plasmon, which results in a SPR feature narrower by a factor of 2 compared with that for the conventional configuration. We demonstrate that it enables a low-cost and low-power-consumption LED to be used as a polychromatic light source, which leads to a decrease in the sensor cost and an increase in the sensor miniaturization potential. Further, we show that these advancements are not at the expense of sensor performance in terms of its sensitivity and resolution. We show that the sensor can be designed to have similar sensitivity and even better resolution compared with those for a conventional configuration. (c) 2006 Optical Society of America.