Understanding of optical readout accuracy with micromechanical sensor cantilever monitored by surface plasmon resonance

This paper reports a concept of micromechanical sensing of environmental condition using the surface plasmon resonance phenomenon. We calculate the resolution in the cantilever bending monitoring using the transfer matrix numerical method. We show that the cantilever deflection can be monitored with a resolution in the nanometer range. The SPs resonance behavior of the multilayer stack in the case of gold cantilever is discussed. We believe that this concept permits a low cost and ease of fabrication for a large bi-dimensional array of sensors with an enhanced signal-to-noise ratio.