Figure of Merit Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor Using Ga-Doped Zinc Oxide in Near Infrared Range

Abstract

This work presents a surface plasmon resonance biosensor for the figure of merit enhancement by using Ga-doped zinc oxide (GZO), i.e., nanostructured transparent conducting oxide as plasmonic material in place of metal at the telecommunication wavelength. Two-dimentional graphene is used here as a biorecognition element (BRE) layer for stable and robust adsorption of biomolecules. This is possible due to stronger van der Waals forces between graphene's hexagonal cells and carbon-like ring arrangement present in biomolecules. The proposed sensor shows improved biosensing due to fascinating electronic, optical, physical, and chemical properties of graphene. This work analyses the sensitivity, detection accuracy, and figure of merit for the GZO/graphene SPR sensor on using the dielectric layer in between the prism and GZO. The highest figure of merit of 366.7 RIU−1 is achieved for the proposed SPR biosensor on using the nanostructured GZO at the 3000 nm dielectric thickness. The proposed SPR biosensor can be used practically for sensing of larger size biomolecules with due availability of advanced techniques for the fabrication of the nanostructured GZO and graphene.