Sensing characteristics of plasmonic structure based on transferring process of polystyrene nano-beads

We analyzed and demonstrated the double layered metallic nano-structures using polystyrene lift-off process on the conventional surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor to enhance the sensitivity of an SPR surface. The double layered plasmonic structures are optimized using the three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method for the width, thickness, and period of the polystyrene beads. The thickness of the metal film and the metallic nano-hole is 20 and 20 nm in the 305 nm wide nano-hole size, respectively. The double layered metallic nano-structures are fabricated with monolayer polystyrene beads of chloromethyl latex 4% w/v 0.4 mu m. The sensitivities of the conventional SPR sensor and the double layered plasmonic sensor are obtained to 42.2 and 60 degree/RIU, respectively. The SPR devices are also applied to the lead ion sensor. The resonance shifts of SPR sensors with and without a poly(vinyl chloride) membrane are 1328 RU and 788 RU from 10(-5) M to 10(-2) M concentration, respectively.