Hybrid photonic surface-plasmon-polariton ring resonators for sensing applications

We introduce a hybrid photonic surface plasmon ring resonator which consists of a silicon nitride (Si3N4) dielectric traveling-wave ring resonator vertically coupled to a thin layer of metallic strip ring resonator made of Silver (Ag) on top. The cladding is assumed to be porous alumina on top of the metal layer, which provides more surface area for the adsorption of target molecules and their efficient interaction with the surface plasmon wave excited at the metal-cladding interface. Simulations show that this hybrid structure has a large refractive index sensitivity due to the excitation of surface plasmon waves and also a relatively narrow resonance linewidth due to the large quality factor of the photonic ring resonator. The Finite Element method is used to systematically design the hybrid structure and to investigate the performance of the hybrid resonator as a refractive index sensor. The proposed structure is very compact and can be implemented on a chip in an integrated platform. Thus, it can be used for lab-on-a-chip sensing applications and is capable of being spectrally and spatially multiplexed for muti-analyte sensing.