Numerical Optimization of Material Configurations for the Development of Surface Plasmon Resonance Devices

Abstract

Various metals (Ag, Al, Au, Bi, Cu), polymers (polyvinylpyrrolidone, polystyrene), and electrically conductive polymers (polyacetylene, polyaniline, poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate) were subjected to a particle swarm optimizer inboth the planar and grating configuration to optimize conditions which supported surface plasmon resonances (SPR) for chemical sensing. The objective functions for these configurations were based on absorption peak depth, full width at half maximum, or the enhancement factor (planar). Simple logic gates were constructed for both configurations which assessed if a lossy region was plasmonic by several figures of merit. The planar substrates returned viable sensing configurations for all of the metals tested, most notably bismuth metal at 2.1{\mu}m. The corrugated metal substrates also resulted in tuned SPRs. Most interestingly an optimized surface plasmon on the conductive polymer, polyaniline at 12{\mu}m, was also discovered.