Gate-controlled graphene surface plasmon resonance glucose sensor

• Published in: Optics communications 2021-08, Vol.493, p.126994, Article 126994
• Main Authors: Hossain, Md. Mahbub, Talukder, Muhammad Anisuzzaman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Graphene; Graphene sensors; SPR sensors; Surface plasmon resonance
• ISSN: 0030-4018; 1873-0310
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2021.126994

We propose a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) glucose sensor where a graphene mono-layer is used with controllable optical property by applying a gate voltage. We show that the gate voltage to the graphene mono-layer can increase the light absorption, and hence, the sensitivity of the proposed glucose sensor significantly. We find that the sensitivity and figure-of-merit of the proposed sensor increase by 21.48% and 49.57% when a 20-V gate voltage is applied to the graphene mono-layer compared to that when there is no gate voltage applied to the graphene mono-layer. We present a linear regression analysis for measuring the blood sugar level (BSL) using the proposed sensor that shows a highly reliable performance of the proposed sensor. We also present the effects of temperature on the proposed sensor performances. We find that the error in the detection of BSL remains within 4.75% on average and within 7.40% in the worst-case scenario when temperature varies by ±10 °C from a reference 25 °C. Comparisons of the proposed sensor with several state-of-the-art sensors show a significantly enhanced behavior, as well as the error induced due to the change in temperature is much smaller than that of 15%, which is used as an allowable error limit for off-the-shelf glucose meters. •Fast and accurate measurement of glucose or blood sugar level is crucial for diabetics.•Work on optical biosensors for blood sugar level detection is scarce.•A voltage-controlled graphene surface plasmon resonance sensor is proposed for glucose detection.•The proposed sensor is highly sensitive and selective, and not affected by environmental changes.