Differentiating surface and bulk interactions in nanoplasmonic   interferometric sensor arrays
  Detecting specific target analytes and differentiating them from interfering background effects is a crucial but challenging task in complex multi-component solutions commonly encountered in environmental, chemical, biological, and medical sensing applications. Here we present a simple nanoplasmonic interferometric sensor platform that can differentiate the adsorption of a thin protein layer on the sensor surface (surface effects) from bulk refractive index changes (interfering background effects) at a single sensing spot, exploiting the different penetration depths of multiple propagating surface plasmon polaritons excited in the ring-hole nanostructures. A monolayer of bovine serum albumin (BSA) molecules with an effective thickness of 1.91nm is detected and differentiated from a 10-3 change in the bulk refractive index unit of the solution. The noise level of the retrieved real-time sensor output compares favorably with traditional prism-based surface plasmon resonance sensors, but is achieved using a significantly simpler collinear transmission geometry and a miniaturized sensor footprint. 
Beibei Zeng, Yongkang Gao, Filbert J. Bartoli
physics.optics