Precise determination of the dielectric constant and thickness of a nanolayer by use of surface plasmon resonance sensing and multiexperiment linear data analysis

Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensing and an enhanced data analysis technique are used to obtain precise predictions of the dielectric constant and thickness of a nanolayer. In the proposed approach, a modified analytical method is used to obtain initial estimates of the dielectric constants and thicknesses of the metal film and a nanolayer on the sensing surface of a SPR sensor. A multiexperiment data analysis approach based on a two-solvent SPR method is then employed to improve the initial estimates by suppressing the noise in the measurement data. The proposed two-stage approach is employed to determine the dielectric constant and thickness of a molecular imprinting polymer nanolayer. It is found that the results are in good agreement with those obtained with an ellipsometer and a high-resolution scanning electron microscope. (C) 2006 Optical Society of America.