Sensitivity Performance Of Ag/TiN And Ag/ZrN Based SPR Sensors For Glucose And Sucrose Identification

This study was carried out to investigate the effect of hybrid plasmonic material thicknesses, which are Ag/TiN and Ag/ZrN on the sensitivity of SPR sensor in detecting glucose and sucrose. A Krestchmann configuration of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor had been theoretically developed via prism coupling technique. A 633nm of red laser was incident onto the prism’s hypothenuse side to excite the SPR. The effect of Ag/TiN and Ag/ZrN thicknesses ranging from 35nm to 60nm on the sensitivity of SPR sensor was studied. The deployment of Ag/ZrN at 44nm/10nm thicknesses resulted the resonance angle shifting about 0.91º from 44.67º to 45.58º as it was exposed to the glucose and sucrose. In contrary, the Ag/TiN coated sensor indicated large angle shifting only for glucose detection which portrays its non-versatility feature. The proposed Ag/ZrN based SPR sensor able to identify the analytes, with almost similar refractive index values with sensitivity values of 0.6725 °/RIU (glucose detection) and 0.6724°/RIU (sucrose detection). In conclusion, Ag/ZrN (tAg=44nm, tZrN=10nm) offers better sensitivity and selectivity performance than Ag/TiN because of the absorption enhancement inside the Ag due to the high scattering efficiency of ZrN.