Sensitivity Enhancement of Optical Long-Range SPR Sensor Based On New 2-D Materials: BP/MoS2/Graphene.

Here, we improved the performance characteristics of surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based optical sensors by using new two-dimensional materials in the structure of these sensors. We studied three types of two-dimensional materials: graphene, molybdenum disulfide (MoS2), and black phosphorus (BP). We also applied the angular interrogation method and employed numerical studies within MATLAB simulations. We investigated the characteristics of a simple configuration, including the type of prism, the thickness of the gold layer, and the number of layers of two-dimensional materials. We compared reflectance, sensitivity, detection accuracy (DA), and figure of merit (FoM) for various materials. We also studied the sensitivity of the sensor in relation to the refractive index of the sensing medium. We observed that the sensitivity reaches a peak at specific refractive index values. The best value for sensitivity is measured at 9778.9 RIU−1, with a detection accuracy of 32 deg−1 and FoM = 15,375 (deg·RIU)−1 for a black phosphorus-based structure. One distinctive feature of this study is investigating the effects of changing the resolution in simulations, which is considered one of the main factors in obtaining more accurate answers and achieving higher sensitivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]