Homogeneous Light Source for Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging

: We describe how to build a homogeneous light source for Surface Plasmon Resonance Imaging (SPRi) which mainly finds its applications in pharmaceutical screening and biotechnology so far. SPR spectroscopy is a label-free, non-destructive and highly sensitive measurement principle for detecting changes in the refractive index in close vicinity of a gold surface. A transfer of this technology to a miniaturized sensor will broaden the range of possible applications. Commercial SPR assays are mainly working with a small number of sensing spots. In contrast, the SPR imaging system shown here will allow the use of an array of many sensing spots. In combination with chemical receptors designed as an artificial nose or an electronic tongue, the simultaneous detection of many analytes is envisioned. So far, lasers or other inhomogeneous light sources were used to illuminate the sensing surface, which is decreasing the systems sensitivity. We show a compact (< 60 mm), low cost, LED based light source which is providing a large area (>300mm2) homogeneous top hat profile. The combination of a high bit-resolution camera with our new light source enables a reflectivity based surface plasmon resonance imaging system with a high refractive index unit (RIU) resolution.