High-performance biosensor exploiting a light guidance in sparse arrays of metal nanoparticles.

We introduce a new approach to plasmonic biosensing with superior biosensing properties based on spectroscopy of an electromagnetic mode guided by a monolayer of sparsely distributed colloidal plasmonic nanoparticles. The theoretical prediction of optical and sensing performance is confirmed by an experimental study in which adsorption of biomolecules on the sensor surface is studied. An unprecedentedly high figure of merit related to surface refractive index changes (FOMS) is demonstrated for distances of the biomolecules from the sensor surface up to 30 nm, which makes this approach a promising candidate for localized biosensing.