Increasing the sensitivity of a surface plasmon resonance sensor using Ti3C2 MXene

Sensors based on the phenomenon of surface plasmon resonance have limited sensitivity, up to 123 degrees per refractive index unit (RIU), which restricts their applicability in detecting subtle changes in biological media (around 10–5 RIU). To address this, a sensor dependent on the Kretschmann–Reather configuration was modified using Ti3C2 MXene material. The sensor was modeled using the finite element method (FEM), yielding the dependence of the wave reflectance on the angle of incidence. Founded on these results, the sensitivity of the sensor was calculated and demonstrated a 10% improvement compared to the conventional Kretschmann–Reather configuration. In addition, human biological real-world samples were modeled using refractive index data, and the error of the proposed approach was determined to be approximately 3%.