In-Depth Conceptual Study of an Enhanced Plasmonic Sensing System Using Antireflective Coatings and Perovskites for the Detection of Infectious Viral Antigens

Since its beginning, various countries have gone through multiple waves of surging COVID-19 infections. With the emergence of variants like Delta and Omicron, the disease is highly contagious and has the ability to spread at an alarming rate. In such scenarios, a quick and effective detection system is highly desirable. In this study, we present the concept of a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based sensing system that can be utilized efficiently and reliably for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 antigens. The SPR system offers multiple advantages like real-time and label-free sensing of analytes and commercial systems have been in the market for more than two decades. Antireflective coatings (ARCs) have a number of application areas because of their unique properties. But they have seldom been used in the area of SPR sensing Hence, with the help of simulation, we make use of these coatings as intermediate layers and propose an enhanced sensing scheme by making use of ARCs of TiO2 and SiO2 and perovskite materials-BaTiO3, PbTiO3, and SrTiO3. We found that, using TiO2, SiO2, and PbTiO3, a maximum sensitivity of 392 degRIU(-1) can be obtained which is 5.29-fold enhancement as compared to the standard SPR arrangement using gold.