Titanium Dioxide-2D Nanomaterial Based on the Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) Biosensor Performance Signature for Infected Red Cells Detection

Abstract

This paper presents a performance signature of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor for infected red blood cells (RBCs) detection using titanium dioxide (\({\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}\))-2D nanomaterial-based structure. There is a substantial deviation between RBCs with and without Plasmodium falciparum infection, which can be represented in refractive indices showing the disease’s diagnosis. For the detection process, the proposed structure is made up by Kretschmann setup with silver (Ag), \({\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}\), and 2D nanomaterials. Here, Ag excites the surface plasmons on prism surface as well as provide sharp resonance dip that lead to better resolution and quality. Likewise, \({\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}\) has admirable electronic and optical properties, including high photocatalytic activity and chemical stability, and is placed between Ag and 2D nanomaterial s for increased sensitivity. Different nanomaterials, MXene, graphene, black phosphorus, and molybdenum disulfide (\({\mathrm{MoS}}_{2}\)), are used to improve the sensor’s efficiency. Sensing parameters are measured by exploiting the transfer matrix method. Initially, an impact of \({\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}\) in the SPR sensor is presented, concluding that 18% of sensitivity is improved after adding \({\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}\) to the conventional structure. Moreover, utilization of 2D nanomaterial in the proposed sensor is observed, resulting that the respected 2D materials are improved the sensitivity by 11%, 4%, 10%, and 34% compared to the \({\mathrm{TiO}}_{2}\)-based sensor. The maximum achieved parameters are a sensitivity of 475.71°/RIU, a quality factor of 236.67 \({\mathrm{RIU}}^{-1}\), and detection accuracy of 5.95, which are improved extremely compared to existing works.