Plasmonic Mach-Zehnder interferometric sensor based on a metal-insulator-metal nanostructure

A plasmonic Mach-Zehnder interferometric sensor based on a semicircular aperture-slit nanostructure patterned on a metal-insulator-metal film is proposed and demonstrated by finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation. Due to the interference between two different surface plasmon polariton modes in this design, the transmission spectra exhibit oscillation behaviors in a broad bandwidth, and can be readily tailored by changing the SPP path length and core layer thickness. Based on this principle, the characteristics of refractive index sensing are also demonstrated by simulation. This structure is illuminated with a collimated light source from the back side to avoid impacts on the interference. Meanwhile, these results show that the proposed structure is promising for portable, efficient, and sensitive biosensing applications.