A novel optical pressure sensor based on surface plasmon polariton resonator

We propose a Metal–Insulator–Metal structure consists of two surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) and an H-shaped resonator. The reflectance spectrum is numerically simulated by the two-dimensional finite-difference time-domain method. The results show that this structure can act as a pressure sensor. To our knowledge, this is the first proposal to utilize the SPP resonator to form a pressure sensor. The size of the SPP resonator can be as small as a few hundred nanometers. The nano-scale pressure sensor opens a wide field for potential applications in biological and biomedical engineering.