Phase-polarisation contrast for surface plasmon resonance biosensors

A technique of phase-polarisation contrast (PPC) for the enhancement of the contrast of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) intensity profile is proposed and experimentally realised. The technique exploits the peculiarities of light phase and polarisation behaviour under SPR. It applies to non-optimum SPR coupling conditions and enables one to lower the resonant minimum of reflected intensity nearly to zero, and hence to increase substantially the ratio of the intensity from the resonance to that at the minimum. We observed the contrast enhancement by more than one order of magnitude when we applied the PPC scheme. The PPC can be efficiently employed in commercial SPR sensors, as it significantly reduces restrictions on allowable parameters of SPR-supporting metal films and biomolecular layers immobilised on them, facilitates SPR observation, and increases the accuracy of SPR shift measurements.