High performance plasmonic crystal sensor formed by soft nanoimprint lithography

This paper describes a new type of plasmonic sensor fabricated by imprint lithography using a soft, elastomeric mold. Angle-dependent, zero-order transmission experiments demonstrate the sensing potential of this device, which uses a two dimensional plasmonic crystal. Full angle-dependent mapping shows that the sensitivity to surface chemical binding events reaches maxima near regions of the plasmonic Brillouin zone where the dispersion curves of multiple surface plasmon polariton modes converge. This behavior, together with the simple, low cost procedures for building the structures, suggests a potentially important role for these devices in high performance chemical and biological sensing. (C) 2005 Optical Society of America.