A self-reference SPR sensor with high Q factor and stability based on gold rectangular nanohole array

This paper proposes a self-reference SPR sensor with high performance based on metallic rectangular nano-hole array and a four-layer stacked LID - HID (Low Index Dielectrics and High Index Dielectrics) dielectric structure, which is useful to improve the stability of the sensor against the environmental factors. The surface plasmon (SP) mode arising from the metallic rectangular nano-hole array is served as sensing mode and is sensitive to the RI of the analyte. The guided mode resonance (GMR) excited in the stacked dielectric structure is served as a self-reference mode and is not sensitive to the analyte. After optimization with FDTD method, the results of the experiment showed that the proposed sensor can achieve a FOM of 320 RIU^-1 and the sensitivity of 800 nm/ RIU for the sensing mode, and a quality factor of 7368 for the self-reference mode. The stability of the sensor has reached 1600, which has better performance than the previous self-reference SPR sensors, and has potential applications in high-precision biochemical sensing, high-Q filtering, and advanced photonic devices.