Characteristics of light emission from surface plasmons based on rectangular silver gratings

We investigated the characteristics of transmitted light from propagating surface plasmons based on rectangular silver gratings. The results calculated by rigorous coupled-wave analysis presented that silver diffraction gratings can produce significant transmittance and conversion efficiency, comparable to the case of dielectric gratings. Especially, silver gratings optimized at a wide range of grating thickness and period may lead to an improved diffraction efficiency larger than 64%. Moreover, the effect of silver oxide layer on the transmittance was examined and a bimetallic structure with a thin gold coating was introduced to prevent an oxidation of silver substrates. As a practical sensor application, silver grating-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) configuration showed an enhanced sensitivity associated with an increase of surface reaction area and strong excitations of local plasmon fields, outperforming a conventional thin-film-based SPR structure.