Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573

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Optical Materials
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/optmat

A novel graphene coated surface plasmon resonance biosensor with

tungsten disulfide (WS2) for sensing DNA hybridization
M. Saifur Rahman a, *, Md.Rabiul Hasan b, Khaleda Akter Rikta a, M.S. Anower a
a
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology, Rajshahi, 6204, Bangladesh
b
Department of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, Rajshahi University of Engineering & Technology, Bangladesh

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this paper, we propose a rigorous configuration of graphene coated surface plasmon resonance (SPR)
Received 7 October 2017 sensor with Tungsten Disulfide (WS2) for sensing DNA hybridization. The present configuration is con-
Received in revised form sisted of prism (SF10 glass), Gold (Au), WS2- graphene and sensing medium. We perform the perfor-
6 November 2017
mance parameters of the proposed sensor in terms of sensitivity, detection accuracy and quality factor.
Accepted 8 November 2017
Available online 5 December 2017
Here we report a dramatic enhancement of the overall performance. Addition of graphene layers increase
the sensitivity but decrease the other performance parameters. To increase the all performance pa-
rameters we add WS2 between metal and graphene layer. Furthermore in this paper, the thickness effect
Keywords:
Biosensor
of Gold (Au) is also analyzed. Numerical analysis shows that the variation of SPR angle for mismatched
DNA hybridization DNA strands is quiet negligible whereas that for complementary DNA strands is considerably countable.
Tungsten disulphide (WS2) Therefore, the proposed biosensor opens a new window towards detection for biomolecular interactions.
Sensitivity © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
SPR angle
Reflectance

1. Introduction day by day.

Nowadays, Surface plasmon resonance (SPR)-based biosensors
have attracted a great deal of attention as one of the leading optical
sensing technologies due to their promising applications in several
fields including medical diagnostics, biomolecules detection,
biochemical detection, environment monitoring, etc. [1e3]. They
have played a vital role in monitoring various biomolecular in-
teractions like protein bindings and DNA hybridization [4,5]. DNA
hybridization commonly indicates a biomolecular method that
estimates the level of genetic relationship between pools of DNA
sequences to obtain the genetic gap between two organisms.
Sensing DNA (DEOXYRIBONUCLEICACID) hybridization, this is a
biochemical process of identifying DNA nucleotide bonding in
proper orientation (between adenine (A) and thymine (T) or be-
tween guanine (G) and cytosine(C)) or in mutated sequence, is very
important for medical diagnostics [6]. This technology is being used
to get information of DNA molecular bonding by which more than
400 diseases are directly diagnosable and the number is increasing
* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: saifurrahman121042@gmail.com (M.S. Rahman), ruetrabu@
gmail.com (Md.Rabiul Hasan), krikta.eee.ruet@gmail.com (K.A. Rikta), md.
shamimanower@yahoo.com (M.S. Anower).
Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), usually referred as the quanta
of charge density oscillations at the metal
dielectric crossing point
energized by transverse magnetically (TM) polarized electromag-
netic waves i.e. surface polariton waves (SPW), is widely being used
for detecting biomolecular interactions in DNA hybridization [7].
Prism based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor utilizes the
surface plasmon waves (SPW) at the interface between a metal (e.g.
gold or silver) and prism to probe the interactions between bio-
molecules and the sensor surface [8]. For the SPR biosensor, the SPR
angle serves as an important output signal for the angular inter-
rogation system. Angle modulation is easy to implement and pro-
vides very accurate control over the incident light beam, leading to
very good refractive index sensitivity [9]. Experimentally, the
Kretschmann [10] design lends itself to a number of angle modu-
lation schemes. For a Prism SPR biosensor, a thin metallic film (Au
or Ag or Al) is coated around prism to separate the sensing medium
and the dielectric [42,43]. Silver is also known to provide better
sensitivity in comparison to gold and other plasmonic metals due to
its high SPR ratio (ratio between the absolute values of the real and
imaginary parts of the dielectric constant) but silver is highly sus-
ceptible to oxidation [11,12]. Gold film is normally preferred due to
its good resistance to oxidation and corrosion in different circum-
stances [8]. However, for gold based prism SPR biosensor,

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optmat.2017.11.013
0925-3467/© 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
568 M.S. Rahman et al. / Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573
biomolecules absorbed poorly on gold, limiting the sensitivity of
this kind of prism SPR sensors [12].
In order to improve the performance of this kind of biosensor,
lots of techniques including metal nano-particles and nano-holes
[13,14], and colloidal gold nano-particles in buffered solution [15],
etc., have been proposed. Another alternative approach to increase
the sensitivity of SPR biosensors is to introduce a sensing layer to
functionalize the gold film in order to enhance the absorption of the
biomolecules [42].
One of the most important constituents of any sensing device is
the binding/adsorbing material with large surface area, and the
recently developed 2D nanomaterials such as graphene have
attracted a considerable amount of attention [7]. Graphene is
emerging as an attractive material candidate for future electronics
and optoelectronics due to its unique combination of several
important characteristics, including high carrier mobility, high
optical transparency, exceptional mechanical flexibility and
strength [16,17]. Recent studies have demonstrated the exciting
potential of exploiting graphene for diverse optoelectronic devices
including solar cells, touch panels, photodetectors, ultra-fast lasers,
polarizers and optical modulators [18e22]. The wideband absorp-
tion, high carrier mobility and short carrier lifetime make graphene
an ideal material for wideband, high-sensitive biosensors. Gra-
phene and graphene oxide provide good support for biomolecule
adsorption due to their large surface area and rich p conjugation
structure, making them suitable dielectric top layers for SPR
sensing [23]. However, graphene produces more damping in SPs
due to large imaginary dielectric constant for higher graphene
layers, and hence result in decreased detection accuracy [12,24].
Concerning high-performance of SPR biosensor, devices based on
hybrid materials comprising graphene and light sensitive materials
have drawn considerable attention of the researchers. This hybrid
material system can take amenities of both the high carrier
mobility of graphene and the strong absorption coefficient of the
light sensitive materials thus simultaneously maximizing both light
harvesting and photo-induced carrier extraction [23]. Interestingly,
another set of 2D materials that belongs to the transition-metal
dichalcogenide (TMDC [25,26] such as MoS2, because of their
large band gap [27], high optical absorption efficiency and large
work function (5.1 eV) as combining with graphene, are becoming
the first choice of the biosensing fraternity [28].
The single layered MoS2, which known as “beyond graphene”
2D nanocrystals material has attracted a great deal of attention. Due
to the quantum confinement effects, the monolayer MoS2 has a
direct bandgap of 1.8 eV, while bulk MoS2 has an indirect bandgap
of 1.2 eV [29]. Basically, a MoS2 enhanced hybrid nanostructure SPR
biosensor can drastically improve detection limit of the device by
using phase modulation technique. Similar to MoS2, the confine-
ment of charge carriers on the horizontal atomic plane can grad-
ually enlarge the energy gap of the WS2 atomic layers [30e32]. In a
WS2 monolayer with a hexagonal configuration, each W atom is
anchored by three pairs of S atoms to form alternating corners (S-
W-S) in a honeycomb network, which is considered as a graphene-
like material [33]. This material has many excellent characteristics,
such as its wonderful flexibility, moderate carrier mobility, and
layer-dependent electronic and optical properties, making it a
promising material for future use in electronic devices, especially in
gas or vapor sensing technology [34e36]. With these unique
properties over a large surface area, WS2 could be an improvement
in the field-effect transistors (FETs) used in vapor sensors [37].
Theoretical studies show that monolayer WS2 has better perfor-
mance compared to MoS2 in terms of enhancing the carrier
mobility when they serve as channels in the transistor. This is
attributed to the lower electron effective mass of WS2 compared to
other MX2 materials [38]. In the research field of photoelectronics,
nano-scaled WS2 also showed outstanding performance.
In this paper, a numerical modeling of highly performance based
Graphene coated biosensor using WS2 is proposed for DNA hy-
bridization detection. Since graphene and WS2 have prominent
characteristics, so graphene-WS2 monolayer is sandwiched be-
tween gold film and sensing medium as biomolecular recognition
elements (BRE) for enhancing sensor performance. This paper is
arranged as follows: theoretical modeling and mathematical ex-
pressions are in Section 2 and 3 respectively, Section 4 discusses the
details of detection approach, while the results and discussions are
in Section 5. Conclusions are in Section 6 and hence necessary
references are placed in the end.
2. Theoretical modeling of the proposed SPR sensor
The structure of the proposed biosensor is given in Fig. 1(a). This
biosensor is comprised of total five layers. We have taken the
refractive index (RI) at operating wavelength (l ¼ 633 nm) and
thicknesses of all the layers from different literature for the accu-
racy of the data. The operating wavelength is taken 633 nm because
the optical nonlinearity can be enhanced at high frequency (low
wavelength). At all photon energies, interband optical transitions
occur due to graphene's band structure [39]. Hence the theoretical
result shows 633 nm is such wavelength at which the overall
sensitivity of the sensor is enhanced at minimal possible Kerr effect.
The refractive index and thicknesses of all the layers are considered
as follows. The first layer is prism (SF10 glass) having refractive
index 1.723 [40]. The second layer is gold (Au) is deposited on the
base of prism. The complex refractive index and the thickness of
gold are considered nAu ¼ 0.1726þ (3.4218)i [5] and dAu ¼ 50 nm
[40] respectively as used. An important point would be ensured
that the sensitivity will be high ranging from 45 nm to 50 nm but
for reasonable detection accuracy and quality factor it has consid-
ered as 50 nm. Another reason is the fluctuating nature of SPR angle
within this range which suggests difficulty to find out a stable
sensing stage that has been seen shown in Fig. 1(d). The third and
fourth layers are made up of WS2 and graphene to achieve WS2-
Graphene sandwiched layer between gold and affinity layer. The
complex refractive index of graphene is considered as
nG ¼ 3þ(1.1487)i whereas its thickness is varied as dG ¼ L  0.34 nm
where L is the number of graphene layers [41]. In addition the
complex refractive index of WS2 is considered as
nTD ¼ 4.8937þ(0.3123)i and its thickness is dTD ¼ 0.80 nm which is
the monolayer of WS2 [3]. Finally the fifth layer which is the last
layer or affinity layer of this biosensor is considered as sensing
medium having refractive index 1.33 before adsorptions of
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of (a) proposed Graphene coated SPR biosensor with WS2
configuration.
 M.S. Rahman et al. / Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573 569

biomolecules is varied Dna to 1.40 after adsorptions of bio- curve so that there is minimum uncertainty in the determination of
molecules. It is possible to exactly reproduce the obtained results resonance dip. It is defined as the ratio of shift in resonance angle
by putting same design parameters (thickness, complex refractive ðDqSPR Þ to the FWHM of the reflectance curve, detection accuracy is
index etc.) as discussed. a unitless parameter;

3. Mathematical expressions of the proposed SPR sensor D:A ¼ DqSPR =FWHM: (9)
The quality factor of the proposed sensor depends upon the
3.1. Mathematical modeling for reflectivity sensitivity and the spectral width of the SPR curve and is given by;
 
The matrix method for N-layer model has been applied for the
Q :F ¼ S=FWHM RIU
1 (10)
calculation of reflectivity of the reflected light. This method is
efficient since it does not associate with any approximation. The
thicknesses of the layers, dk are considered along the z-axis. The
dielectric constant and refractive index of the kth layer is consid-
ered as εk an nk, respectively. The tangential fields at the first 4. Detection approach
boundary are related to those at the final boundary by Ref. [39],


 This detection concept starts to show the reflectance-incident
U1 U characteristic of the SPR-based DNA sensor before adding any
¼ M N
1 (1)
V1 VN
1 DNA molecule (bare sensor), as shown in Fig. 5(b). In our calcula-
tions, the dependency of reflectance on incidence angle is
where, U1 and V1 represents the tangential components of electric measured within the Phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) solution. We
and magnetic fields respectively at the boundary of the first layer first present how refractive index changes with change in con-
and UN-1 and VN-1 are the corresponding fields for the boundary at centration and this relation can be expressed as in Ref. [5] which is;
Nth layer. The Mij presents the characteristics matrix of the com- na ¼ nc þ ca dn where ca is the concentration of adsorbed molecules,
dc
bined structure of the sensor, and for p- polarized light it can be nc is the refractive index of the PBS solution and dn/dc is the
given as [41], increment in refractive index due to the adsorbate. The refractive
YN
1    index increment parameter is dn/dc ¼ 0.182 cm3/gm in the case of
M11 M12
Mij ¼ Mk ¼ (2) using a standard buffer solution [5,6,40,41]. DNA molecules shift
k¼2 ij M21 M22 the SPR angle rightwards due to the addition of probe which
  changes the refractive index of the sensing dielectric. By intro-
cos bk
ði sin bk Þ=qk duction of DNAs as electron-rich molecules, the number of carriers
With; Mk ¼ (3)

iqk sin bk cos bk should change in the WS2-Graphene layer concentration which has
led in varying the propagation constant. Thus the proposed SPR
 1=2  1=2 sensor with high performance is applied to detect the DNA hy-
mk εk
n21 sin2 q1
Where; qk ¼ cos qk ¼ (4) bridization based on the SP angle variations.
εk εk Sensing probe DNA hybridization by the proposed SPR biosensor
is shown in Fig. 2. In Fig. 2(a), a five-layer schematic model (prism-
2p 2pdk  1=2 Au-WS2-Graphene-Sensing layer composed of probe DNA and PBS
bk ¼ nk cos qk ðzk
zk
1 Þ ¼ εk
n21 sin2 q1 (5)
l l solution) of the proposed sensor is shown whereas corresponding
SPR curves before (red line) and after (blue line) adding probe DNA
The reflection coefficient for p-polarized incident light is given
are shown in Fig. 2(b). The results show that SPR angle is 58.30 for
by Ref. [20],
bare sensor and 59.25 after adding probe DNA. It can be seen in
ðM11 þ M12 qN Þq1
ðM21 þ M22 qN Þ Fig. 2(b) that SPR curve shows ambipolar behavior since the SPR
rp ¼ (6) angle can be controlled by the refractive index. It can also be seen in
ðM11 þ M12 qN Þq1 þ ðM21 þ M22 qN Þ
Fig. 2 (b) that SPR angle is 58.30 for bare sensor and 59.25 after
Finally, the reflection intensity for p-polarized light is expressed adding probe DNA i.e. immobilization of the probe DNAs on the
as [39], WS2- graphene surface, the SPR angle is considerably right shifted
by 0.95 .
2
Rp ¼ rp (7) Sensing mismatched DNA with probe DNA hybridization by the
proposed SPR biosensor is shown in Fig. 3. In Fig. 3(a), a five-layer
schematic model (prism-Au-WS2-Graphene-Sensing layer
composed of mismatched DNA, probe DNA and PBS solution) of the
3.2. Performance analysis of the proposed SPR sensor proposed sensor is shown whereas corresponding SPR curves
before (red line) adding DNA, after (blue line) adding probe DNA,
The main performance parameters of the SPR sensor are char-
and after (green line) adding mismatched DNA are shown in
acterized on the basis of its sensitivity, detection accuracy, and the
Fig. 3(b). The results show that SPR angle is 58.30 for bare sensor
quality factor, all should be as high as possible for a good sensor
and 59.25 after adding only probe DNA, and 59.30 after adding
[12]. The sensitivity, S is defined as the ratio of shift in the SPR angle
mismatched DNA. This indicates that a single-base mismatched
of incidence ðDqSPR Þ to the refractive index change in the sensing
event using the non-complementary DNAs to the immobilized
region ðDna Þ, and the dimension of sensitivity is deg/RIU.
probe DNAs on Graphene surface results in no significant change in
SPR angle (change of SPR angle while emerging non-
DqSPR
S¼ (8) complementary target is DqSPR ¼ 0.05 ). When the probe mole-
Dna
cules are brought to the mismatched target, no hydrogen bonding is
To enhance the resolution of SPR sensor, it is necessary to de- taken place between probe and target DNA strands because of the
creases the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the reflectance presence of mismatched pair. So there is no change of charges in
570 M.S. Rahman et al. / Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573

Fig. 2. Sensing probe DNA hybridization by the proposed Au-WS2-Graphene hybrid based SPR biosensor: (a) Schematic of the 5-Layer model and (b) SPR curve of DNA molecules
(SPR angle is 58.30 for bare sensor and 59.25 after adding probe DNA).

Fig. 3. Sensing probe DNA and mismatched DNA hybridization by the proposed Au-WS2-Graphene hybrid based SPR biosensor: (a) Schematic of the 5-Layer model and (b) SPR
curves of DNA molecules (SPR angle is 58.30 for bare sensor, 59.25 after adding probe DNA, and 59.30 after immersing mismatched DNA).

Fig. 4. Sensing probe DNA and complementary DNA hybridization by the proposed SPR biosensor: (a) Schematic of the 5-Layer model and (b) SPR curves of DNA molecules (SPR
angle is 59.25 after adding probe DNA, and 60.75e61.10 after adding different complementary DNA).

target molecules. helix structure [5]. The proposed model explains the analytical
Complementary hybridization event is defined when two behavior of the sensor to detect the hybridization of target DNAs to
single-stranded complementary ssDNA, one is probe and the rest is the probe DNAs that are pre-immobilized on WS2-graphene sur-
target, is attached together and form double-stranded (dsDNA) face. The proposed SPR technology of this study also capable of
 M.S. Rahman et al. / Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573 571

Fig. 5. (a) The reflection intensity spectra of the proposed SPR biosensor with the varied RI. Inset: the relationship between resonance angle and RI (b) SPR curve before adsorption
of DNA molecules (c) Variation of change in resonance angle with various thicknesses of gold

distinguishing between complementary and single-based mis-  

Target¼1000nM
matched DNAs which is important for characterize the mutations DRP
T
min ¼ RProbe
min
Rmin ¼ 0:19 %
min
and single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP).
Fig. 4 describes the R
q characteristic of the proposed model for Table 2 shows the detail information while complementary
different concentrations of complementary DNA, where each dia- target is introduced within the SPR sensor. To make a decision from
gram depicts specific concentration of the DNA molecules. In gained results Table 3 is prepared which would be useful to confirm
Fig. 4(a), a five-layer schematic model (prism-Au-WS2-Graphene- hybridization as well as SNP events with either complementary or
Sensing layer composed of complementary DNA, probe DNA and mismatched DNA molecules.
PBS solution) of the proposed sensor is shown whereas corre-
sponding SPR curves after (red line) adding only 1000 nM probe
5. Performance analysis
DNA, after adding 1000 nM (blue line), 1000 nM (green line),
1000 nM (black line), and 1000 nM (magenta line) of comple-
Detail performances are analyzed in this section with the help of
mentary DNA are shown in Fig. 4(b). The results show that SPR
Fig. 5(a) and (b) and Tables 4 and 5. Various solutions in water with
angles are 59.25, 60.75, 60.85, 61.00, and 61.10 respectively for the
concentrations that provide refractive indices of 1.33, 1.35, 1.37, 1.39
cases. According to these analytical data, two important factors,
and 1.40 are considered as the sensing mediums which is shown in
detection parameter which are the SPR angle, qSPR and reflectance
Fig. 5(a). SPR based sensor with layer of metaleAu detects the
play crucial role in detecting the DNA hybridization events. Table 1
refractive indexes of these solutions. The sensing mechanism of
gives us information about how qSPR and Rmin parameters change
proposed SPR sensor can be explained as the change in reflectance
with different concentrations of complementary DNA molecules
and resonance angle due to the presence of solutions of different
which reveals the sensitivity, qSPR towards the hybridization of the
refractive indexes. As solutions of various refractive indices come in
target DNAs. It is apparently seen that the considerable increase of
contact with graphene layer, the refractive index and hence the
SPR angle is a sign of probe-target matching combination in DNA
dielectric constant of graphene layer changes, which in turn
hybridization. The analytical data indicates the strong dependency
of the SPR angle on the concentration increment which can have a
predictable influence on the reflectance-incident angle character- Table 1
P
T
istics of SPR device. The deviations DqSPR and DRP
Tmin are introduced
Rmin and qSPR for Different Concentration of complementary DNA Molecules.
as the representatives of whether the hybridization event occurred Concentration (ca) [nM] Rmin, [%] qSPR [deg]
or not? The following equations describe the selected parameters;
1000 (Probe) 2.94 59.25
  1000 (Complementry Target) 3.13 60.75
DqP
T
SPR
Probe
¼ qSPR
Target¼1000nM

qSPR ¼ 1:50 deg: 1001 (Complementry Target) 3.14 60.85
min 1010 (Complementry Target) 3.17 61.00
1100 (Complementry Target) 3.19 61.10
572 M.S. Rahman et al. / Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573

Table 2
DRP
T
min and DqSPR for Different Concentration of complementary DNA Molecules.
P
T

Target
Concentration (ca) [nM] DRP
T Probe
min [%] ¼ Rmin
Rmin DqP
T
SPR [deg] ¼ qSPR
qSPR
Probe Taret

1000 (Target) ðDRP
T

min Þmin ¼ 0:19 ðDqP
T
SPR Þmin ¼ 1:50
1001 (Target) 0.20 1.60
1010 (Target) 0.23 1.75
1100 (Target) 0.25 1.85

Table 3 Table 5
Deciding table for hybridization based on different conditions happened to detec- Sensitivity (S), Detection Accuracy (D.A) and Quality Factor (Q.F) for different Layers.
tion parameters.
Graphene (L) and WS2 (M) layer S (deg/RIU) D.A Q.F (RIU
1)
Conditions Decision
L ¼ 0 & M ¼ 0 83.57 2.127 30.39
DRP
T ¼ & ¼
min ðDRmin Þmin && DqSPR ðDqSPR Þmin
P
T P
T P
T Hybridization is happened L 1 M 0 85.00 1.957 27.96
L ¼ 2 & M ¼ 0 86.43 1.753 25.05
DRP
T
min ðDRmin Þmin && DqSPR ðDqSPR Þmin
P
T P
T P
T Try again
L ¼ 3 & M ¼ 0 87.86 1.708 24.41
DRP
T
min ðDRmin Þmin && DqSPR ðDqSPR Þmin
P
T P
T P
T Try again
L ¼ 1 & M ¼ 1 95.71 1.763 25.19
DRP
T
min ðDRmin Þmin && DqSPR ðDqSPR Þmin
P
T P
T P
T SNP is happened

biomolecules of graphene and enhancing the carrier mobility of

changes the resonance angle of the SPR spectrum. For numerical
calculations, Refractive index sensitivity was achieved for sensor in
the sensing range of aqueous environment (1.33e1.40) suitable for
biosensing applications. Therefore, the proposed biosensor can be
utilized for practical biosensing applications. The reflectivity, R and
resonance angle, qSPR are obtained and plotted with the help of
MATLAB in Fig. 5(b) for all of the configurations (without any BRE,
with one layer of Graphene, two layer of Graphene, three layer of
Graphene, and one layer WS2 with one layer Graphene). The values
Rmin, qSPR , DqSPR , and FWHM are obtained from Fig. 5(b) by the
process discussed in section 2 and 3 and are tabulated in Table 4.
Performance parameters are calculated from Fig. 5(b) in terms of
sensitivity, S, detection accuracy, D. A, and quality factor, Q. F, using
(8), (9), and (10) respectively for the discussed conventional and
proposed structures and are tabulated in Table 5. In Fig. 5(b) it is
seen that resonance angle increases when WS2 is added as BRE
with Graphene layer. It gives the angle 58.30 deg with only one and
one layer of WS2. It is also seen from Fig. 1(b) that the reflectance is
obtained 3.15 for the case discussed above. These improved results
obtained with the proposed hybrid biosensor are obviously higher
than those occurs with the conventional SPR biosensor. The con-
ventional resonance angle and reflectance are also shown in
Fig. 5(b) and in Table 4 for the comparison which is 57.00 deg and
0.34 respectively. These results with only Graphene layer are also
obtained and shown in Fig. 1(b) and in Table 4 which are 57.25 and
1.65 respectively for one layer, 57.50 deg and 3.59 respectively for
two layers and 57.75 deg and 5.90 respectively for three layers. It is
seen in Table 5 that when added only graphene layer successively,
sensitivity is increased to 85.00 deg/RIU for one layer, 86.43 deg/
RIU for two layers, 87.86 deg/RIU for three layers, and adding a layer
of WS2 with only one layer of graphene the sensitivity enhanced to
95.71 deg/RIU whereas adding a layer of MoS2 or WSe2 with only
one layer of graphene the sensitivity enhanced to 87.8 deg/RIU or
92.35 deg/RIU [3,6]. These enhanced sensitivity occurs for the
shifting of qSPR , which is due to the absorption ability of
WS2. It is obvious from Tables 4 and 5 that detection accuracies and
quality factors are decreased a little due to the increased graphene
layer of the biosensors. But when we add WS2 with the graphene
based sensor then detection accuracy and quality factor are again
increased well because of their relation to FWHM, however they are
still adequate for the detection of DNA hybridization where sensi-
tivity is the key concern. The noble plasmonic materials including
silver, aluminum and copper are prone to oxidation. Therefore,
when these materials are used for SPR sensing applications, the
sensing performances are expected to decrease over time. On the
other hand, gold can be regarded as one of the best materials for
SPR sensor due to its non-oxidation nature. Additionally, other
materials involved in the proposed SPR sensor are not prone to any
kind of degradation over time. Due to chemical resistivity and non-
oxidation nature of the gold, the proposed SPR sensor is expected
long-term stability. Moreover, tungsten disulfide and graphene has
low thermal sensitivity i.e. the change of refractive index with
temperature is extremely small. Therefore, the effect of tempera-
ture can be avoided in common environments without extreme
temperature variations. In practice, lower full-width-at-half-
maxima (FWHM) are preferable since it will effectively suppress
the spectral noise [44]. As a result, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of
the detected signal will increase significantly. The proposed sensor
shows the lowest FWHM of 3.80 deg, which represents improved
SNR.
Finally, we have made a table showing the comparison among
performances of the proposed SPR sensor with other existing
sensors in the literature. Table 6 has been made with taking into
account of sensitivity, enhancement type, minimum reflectance,
operating wavelength and quality factor.
6. Conclusion
We numerically analyze a state-of-the-art graphene coated SPR
biosensor using WS2 for the detection of DNA hybridization. By

Table 4
Rmin, qSPR , DqSPR , and FWHM for different Layers.

Graphene (L) and WS2 (M) layer Rmin, (%) qSPR (deg) DqSPR (deg) FWHM (deg)

L ¼ 0 & M ¼ 0 0.34 57.00 5.85 2.75

L ¼ 1 & M ¼ 0 1.65 57.25 5.95 3.04
L ¼ 2 & M ¼ 0 3.59 57.50 6.05 3.45
L ¼ 3 & M ¼ 0 5.90 57.75 6.15 3.60
L ¼ 1 & M ¼ 1 3.15 58.30 6.70 3.80
 M.S. Rahman et al. / Optical Materials 75 (2018) 567e573 573

Table 6
Comparison among proposed sensor with other existing sensors.

Ref. Enhancement strategy Wavelength (nm) S (deg/RIU) Rmin Q.F (RIU
1)

[28] MoS2 nanosheet 633 81.6 7.63  10
4 3.44

[12] graphene sheet coated on silver with chromium substrate 633 68.03 6.2  10
2 9.691
[42] Gold and aluminum thin film coating 680 9.56 e 2.31
[43] Gold-silver bimetallic film 632.8 54.84 0.1 e
[6] Au-Graphene-MoS2 hybrid 633 89.29 2.5  10
3 13.13
[2] transition metal dichalcogenide with silicon nanosheet 633 89.98 1.65  10
2 e
Proposed work Graphene coated with WS2 633 95.71 3.15  10
2 25.19

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