Ultrasensitive Biosensor with Hyperbolic Metamaterials Composed of Silver and Zinc Oxide

We propose a hyperbolic metamaterial-based surface plasmon resonance (HMM-SPR) sensor by composing a few pairs of alternating silver (Ag) and zinc oxide (ZnO) layers. Aiming to achieve the best design for the sensor, the dependence of the sensitivity on the incidence angle, the thickness of the alternating layer and the metal filling fraction are explored comprehensively. We find that the proposed HMM-SPR sensor achieves an average sensitivity of 34,800 nm per refractive index unit (RIU) and a figure of merit (FOM) of 470.7 RIU^-1 in the refractive index ranging from 1.33 to 1.34. Both the sensitivity (S) and the FOM show great enhancement when compared to the conventional silver-based SPR sensor (Ag-SPR). The underlying physical reason for the higher performance is analyzed by numerical simulation using the finite element method. The higher sensitivity could be attributed to the enhanced electric field amplitude and the increased penetration depth, which respectively increase the interaction strength and the sensing volume. The proposed HMM-SPR sensor with greatly improved sensitivity and an improved figure of merit is expected to find application in biochemical sensing due to the higher resolution.