Miniaturized Surface Plasmon Resonance based Sensor System

Abstract

We describe the miniaturization of the Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) technology which mainly finds its applications in pharmaceutical screening and biotechnology so far. SPR spectroscopy is a label-free, nondestructive and highly sensitive measurement principle detecting changes in the refractive index in striking distance to a gold surface. A transfer of this technology to a miniaturized sensor will broaden the range of possible applications. A promising feature which is included in the miniaturized system is the angle-dependent recording of the SPR signals without moving parts. Commercial SPR assays are mainly working with a small number of sensing spots. In contrast, the SPR imaging system shown here will allow to use an array of many sensing spots. In combination with chemical receptors designed as an artificial nose, the simultaneous detection of many analytes is envisioned for future applications.