Improving the performance of gold nanohole array biosensors by controlling the optical collimation conditions

An experimental investigation on how the bulk and surface sensitivities of gold nanohole arrays fabricated by interference lithography affect the degree of white light beam collimation is presented. The optical transmission response of nanohole arrays has been recorded by focused and collimated beam transmission spectra. The results show that both the bulk and surface sensitivities for the collimated case are much larger than for the focused case. In particular, the shape of the spectra was dependent on the degree of beam collimation. The results showed that improved sensing performance (around 3.5 times) and higher figure of merit (around 4.4 times) can be obtained by simply adjusting the incident/collection experimental conditions in transmission measurements.