Simulation Analysis of a Highly Sensitive Biosensor for Early Detection of Cancer Cells Based on a 1D Photonic Crystal

A one-dimensional (1D) photonic crystal-based novel photonic biosensor is introduced for detecting cancerous cells that grow in different parts of the human body. The proposed sensor has been designed with an alternate arrangement of Si and CaF₂ that has a defect layer in the middle of the structure. The widely known transfer matrix method has been utilized to compute the transmission spectra. The performance of the sensor is determined by the resonant wavelength shift in the transmission spectra by varying different parameters such as the angle of incidence and the thickness of the sample defect layer. Because each cell in the human body has a separate refractive index, performance parameters have been calculated separately for each type of cancer for accuracy. The reported sensor shows a high average sensitivity of 1705.82 nm per RIU for different cancerous cells. It also exhibits high quality factor (62216.41) and figure of limit (103,651.68 per RIU) with a very low detection limit (1.2945E-06 RIU). The proposed 1D structure has a compact design, is easy to fabricate, is cost effective and may be used in other biosensing applications as well.