High-Performance Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor for Pathogenic Cancer Detection Using Ag/Si/EuS Layers

A mutation in a gene’s DNA sequence that makes a person prone to or already afflicted with a certain genetic illness or condition, like cancer. The initial discovery of this cancer with a low-cost and highly sensitive device is required. Therefore, this article explores the recital analysis of a novel surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor for pathogenic cancer employing silver (Ag), silicon (Si), and europium sulfide (EuS). To design this sensor, we use the Kretschmann configuration, where Ag is deposited over the surface area of the prism in order to excite the surface plasmons. To protect the Ag layer from oxidization in addition to enhancing the sensor’s performance, Si and EuS are placed over Ag successively. The proposed sensor’s performance is evaluated based on sensitivity (S), quality factor (QF), and detection accuracy (DA), utilizing the transfer matrix method (TMM) in conjunction with the angular interrogation technique at a wavelength of 633 nm. The findings indicate that the highest achieved sensing parameters are a sensitivity of 290.63°/RIU, a QF of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$98.58~{\mathrm {RIU}}^{-1}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>, and a DA of 4.04. Subsequently, the required standard fabrication steps are discussed to reproduce the proposed sensor experimentally. In conclusion, a comparative analysis of the performance between the proposed work and existing work has been presented at the end.