Improved Performance of Nanohole Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensors by the Integrated Response Method

We examine both experimental and simulated data of the optical transmission response of nanohole arrays in metal films to bulk and surface refractive index changes. We compare the signal-to-noise performance of the following three different analysis methods: the conventional peak shift method, a normalized-difference integrated-response method that is commonly used in 3-D plasmonic crystals, and an integrated response (IR) method. Our IR method shows a 40% and 90% improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for bulk and surface binding tests, respectively, compared with the direct measurement of the transmission-peak wavelength shift, promising improved sensing performance for future nanohole-array sensor applications.