Investigation of surface plasmon resonance phenomena by finite element analysis and Fresnel calculation

In this study, a novel simulated method was developed to provide a graphical and simplistic simulation technique for the purpose of enhancing feasibility of classical surface plasmon resonance (SPR) experiment. Winspall, the software based on the Fresnel equations and the matrix formalism was used to compute the reflectivity of optical multilayer systems. In a simulation study, SPR curves were plotted using Winspall with ultrapure water, 50% ethanol aqueous solvent and pure ethanol as the environmental media. SPR angles of 67.1°, 71.7° and 72.5° were obtained, respectively. These values displayed significant disparity from the experimental data of 62.7°, 65.1° and 65.3° under the same conditions. Finite element analysis (FEA) was then evaluated for its suitability as a better alternative method. By establishing a new Kretchmann SPR model and simulating the S11 parameters, the obtained SPR angles of 62.6°, 65.0° and 65.3° agreed well with the experimental results. Thus FEA method was a more feasible alternative based on our experimental conditions. Hence, an optimal methodology for the theoretical study of SPR detection was developed in this study which contains port boundary conditions, background filed and period boundary conditions. More importantly, this study has established a new avenue of SPR chip applications for portable SPR devices.