title: Double-layered metal grating for high-performance refractive index sensing.
abstract: The detection of minuscule changes in the local refractive index by localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs), carried by metal nanostructures, has been used successfully in applications such as real-time and label-free detection of molecular binding events. However, localized plasmons demonstrate 1-2 orders of magnitude lower figure of merit (FOM) compared with their propagating counterparts. Here, we propose and experimentally demonstrate a high-performance refractive index sensor based on a structure of double-layered metal grating (DMG) with an FOM and FOM* reaching 38 and 40 respectively under normal incidence. Such a high FOM and FOM* arise from a result of a sharp fano resonance, which is caused by the coherent interference between the LSPR from the individual top gold stripes and Wood's anomaly (WA). Moreover, a small conformal decay length of ~68 nm is determined in DMG, indicating that the DMG is a promising candidate for label-free biomedical sensing.
authors.forename: Guozhen
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yang
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Guohui
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.forename: Chongjun
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Jin