(65) Building and Testing a Surface Plasmon Resonance Biosensor

     Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is one of the most sensitive, reliable, and versatile techniques for real-time optical sensing. I have constructed and tested an SPR sensor in the Kretchmann configuration, which can... [ view full abstract ]

     Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is one of the most sensitive, reliable, and versatile techniques for real-time optical sensing. I have constructed and tested an SPR sensor in the Kretchmann configuration, which can detect the presence of different liquids in contact with a thin gold film via attenuated total reflectance. Detection events are registered as changes in the angular reflectance curve, at its most sensitive point, due to the optical properties of the analyte. I have also modeled the SPR curves using a software implementation of the Fresnel equations and found a good match between the experimental and computed curves. This research paves the wave for future Sewanee students to experiment with state-of-the-art optical biosensing.