A Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR)-Based Biosensor Simulation Platform for Performance Evaluation of Different Constructional Configurations

Abstract

Biosensors are a type of sensor that have gained prominence in recent years due to their advantages over traditional sensing methods, which are expensive and time-consuming. They are composed of two main parts: a recognizer bioelement and a transducer—both can be of different types depending on the desired application. An optical biosensor based on Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) achieves high sensitivity, is label-free and its multilayer construction allows an increase in the selectivity of the target analyte. As the choice of layers in SPR-based biosensors and the analysis of the obtained multilayer configuration is very difficult and expensive, in this work, we present an SPR-based biosensor simulation tool, developed through mathematical modeling, with an easy-to-use interface and several design options for calculating and analyzing the reflectance and angle of incidence of this type of device. The application, developed in Matlab, behaved as expected, offering the user the possibility to export data to Excel and becoming a useful alternative for mathematical analysis of SPR biosensors and its parameters, such as quality factor, detection accuracy and sensitivity.