Enhancement of biomolecular detection sensitivity by surface plasmon resonance ellipsometry

We present the application of ellipsometry to the phase measurement of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) in biomolecular detection. In this configuration, the phase measurement gives a large enhancement of detection sensitivity in comparison to traditional SPR techniques. In this work, the experimental setup for SPR ellipsometry is based on both custom-built rotating analyzer ellipsometer and an imaging ellipsometer which are equipped with a SPR-cell and a flow system, respectively. We investigate the adequate thickness of the gold layer used for SPR cell and the resolution of the phase detection using two ellipsometric methods under the SPR condition. The rotating analyzer method yields higher sensitivity sufficient to detect changes in the effective thickness of biomolecular layers of less than 1 pm. In comparison to conventional SPR the simultaneous measurement of ellipsometric parameters, Δ and ψ, yields more information which is useful for quantitative analysis based on fitting theoretical solutions to experimental results.