Metal grating on a substrate nanostructure for sensor applications

Extraordinary optical transmission via periodic array of sub-wavelength slits in a metal layer on a dielectric substrate is revisited for sensing applications. Numerical case studies using an in-house software tool showed two peaks of enhanced transmission, one being very sensitive to the ambient index and another to the substrate index. Based on this, we designed and realized an optical sensor with sensitivity of the order of 400 nm/RIU. (C) 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.