A Phase-Intensity Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor for Avian Influenza A (H5N1) Detection

Abstract

In this paper, we present a phase-intensity surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor and demonstrate its use for avian influenza A (H5N1) antibody biomarker detection. The sensor probes the intensity variation produced by the steep phase response at surface plasmon excitation. The prism sensor head is fixed between a pair of polarizers with a perpendicular orientation angle and a forbidden transmission path. At SPR, a steep phase change is introduced between the p- and s-polarized light, and this rotates the polarization ellipse of the transmission beam. This allows the light at resonance to be transmitted and a corresponding intensity change to be detected. Neither time-consuming interference fringe analysis nor a phase extraction process is required. In refractive index sensing experiments, the sensor resolution was determined to be 6.3 × 10−6 refractive index values (RIU). The sensor has been further applied for H5N1 antibody biomarker detection, and the sensor resolution was determined to be 193.3 ng mL−1, compared to 1 μg mL−1 and 0.5 μg mL−1, as reported in literature for influenza antibody detection using commercial Biacore systems. It represents a 517.3% and 258.7% improvement in detection limit, respectively. With the unique features of label-free, real-time, and sensitive detection, the phase-intensity SPR biosensor has promising potential applications in influenza detection.

Grating-Coupled Surface Plasmon Resonance (GC-SPR) Optimization for Phase-Interrogation Biosensing in a Microfluidic Chamber

“…System resolution depends on intrinsic (sensing area) and extrinsic (signal acquisition, apparatus optics and mechanics, temperature control) factors. Our system has a resolution of 3 × 10 −5 RIU in line with other reports using plasmonic crystals [ 44 , 45 ], but it can be further increased acting mainly on extrinsic parameters, such as temperature control and angular accuracy of the servomotor adopted, which was found to be a major source of instability in repeated measurements. The need for a more sensitive system, while maintaining the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the apparatus, is crucial for applications to clinically relevant biochemical interaction studies.…”

Sensitivity Enhancement in Surface Plasmon Resonance Biochemical Sensor Based on Transition Metal Dichalcogenides/Graphene Heterostructure

“…Besides angular sensitivity, the differential phase change between p-polarized and s-polarized reflective wave is another approach to detect the analyte [ 28 , 29 , 30 ]. The variation of the phase sensitivity with respect to the different number of MX 2 and thickness are showed in Figure 7 a–d.…”

Quantitative Cross-Platform Performance Comparison between Different Detection Mechanisms in Surface Plasmon Sensors for Voltage Sensing

“…It is important to point out that if the sensitivity or how far the plasmonic dip moves is more important than the depth of the SPR dip. This is the case for the confocal surface plasmon microscopy system [ 15 , 21 , 22 ] and SPR phase measurements [ 13 , 31 ]. It is then better to operate at slightly higher reflectance intensity as labelled in ‘E’ in Figure 12 a.…”