Dual pitch plasmonic devices for polarization enhanced colour based sensing

Plasmonic devices provide a unique sensitivity to changes in the permittivity of the immediate, near-surface environment. In this work we explore the use of dual pitch plasmonic devices combined with microfluidics for polarization enhanced colour sensing of a chemicals’ refractive index. We demonstrate that the use of cross-shaped apertures can produce polarization tunable color based sensing in the optical regime and show that the spectral variations as a function of the incident polarization can be decomposed into contributions from the two orthogonal modes that characterize the dual pitch plasmonic device. Finally we demonstrate that the use of the full colour spectrum in the visible range in combination with polarization control enables sensing ‘by-eye’ of refractive index changes below 1 × 10 -3 RIU.