Differential-phase surface plasmon resonance biosensor

In this paper, a novel differential-phase-sensitive surface plasmon resonance biosensor (DP-SPRB) is proposed and developed, in which a two-frequency laser is integrated with a differential amplifier in order to analytically convert the phase modulation into amplitude modulation. With the use of the conventional envelope detection technique, the differential phase is precisely decoded in real time in terms of the demodulated amplitude. In order to verify high detection sensitivity of the DP-SPRB, a sucrose-water solution and glycerin-water solution at low concentrations were both tested, and the experimental results confirm that the detection sensitivity on wt % concentration of the sucrose solution is 0.00001%. Moreover, the real-time monitoring mouse IgG/antimouse IgG interaction shows the minimum concentration of mouse IgG to be at 10 fg/mL. To our knowledge, this is the highest sensitivity ever measured by a surface plasmon resonance biosensor. However, because of the limited dynamic range of DP-SPRB, it can only apply to biomolecule interactions at extremely low concentration.