Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor Based On Planar Waveguide In SOI

As the rapid social and economic development, people’s living standards improve greatly, the persuit of high quality of life becomes general. The science and technology especially sensor technology and biotechnology develop rapidly which make the persuit of high quality of life more realistic and urgent. The work of disease surveillance, environmental protection, food safety has become essential, while bio-sensing technology has been widely used in the detection of diseases, clinical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, food testing.The character of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor such as label-free, high sensitivity, low cost, real-time and real-field testing make it very usefull in the field of bio-sensing.This paper aims to study a SOI-based planar waveguide surface plasmon resonance sensor with high sensitivity. It is different from the commercial SPR sensors using attenuated total reflection optical prism couplers, because it has a smaller size and higher levels of integration.A planar waveguide surface plasmon sensor in SOI (Silicon-on-insulator) has be proposed, we study biosensors which operate at the wavelength of1550nm. We use the etching face or the end face as the mirror, transplant the principle of prism-coupled SPR sensor to work well in planar configuration. We simplify the detection, and do the real-time detection.Through the transfer matrix, FDTD theory, we simulate and optimize the waveguide device structure and layout design. After optimizing the parameters, the detection sensitivity can reach22.4°/RIU theoretically. If we set the angle between the the waveguide array as0.135°, the detection limit of the device can reach6.0×10-3RIU.We also study the semiconductor process which can be used in the fabrication of SOI surface plasmon resonance sensor including the entire production process of the semiconductor chip and the chip sidewall metal sputtering processes.