A Tamm Plasmon Refractive Index Sensor for Cancer Cell Detection Based on TiN and Semi-Porous Si3N4 Distributed Bragg Reflector

AbstractIn this article, a theoretical study of Tamm plasmon based Refractive Index (RI) sensor for cancer cell detection has been proposed. The proposed sensor structure comprises of a thin titanium nitride (TiN) layer of thickness (dm = 30 nm) followed by a liquid cell of thickness (dL = 1500 nm) then followed by 16 pairs of semi-porous DBR (spDBR). The high and low index layers of spDBR constitute of silicon nitride (Si3N4) and porous Si3N4, respectively. We considered the porosity of low-index layer as 75%. The existence of Tamm plasmon between TiN and spDBR interface and the effect of porosity on the photonic band gap (PBG) of the spDBR have been studied as well. The impact ofdm anddL on the reflection spectrum of the proposed structure has also been investigated. We investigated the detection of cancer-affected cells by replacing the liquid cell with respective cancer-affected cell and its corresponding normal cell, including blood cancer (Jurkat), cervical cancer (HeLa), adrenal gland cancer (PC12), two types of breast cancer (MDA-MB-231 and MCF-7), and skin cancer (Basal) cells. The proposed structure achieved the sensitivity, Q-factor, figure of merit, and detection limit of 752.85  nm/RIU, 131.64, 70.62 RIU−1, and 5  × 10−4 RIU, respectively. The proposed design can also be utilized in biological and gas sensing applications.
Source: Plasmonics - Category: Biomedical Science Source Type: research