IMPROVEMENTS RELATING TO SURFACE PLASMON RESONANCE SENSORS

摘要

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor for biochemical and similar testing on large area samples such as the gel (10) of an electrophoresis apparatus (13). The gel is sandwiched between a pair of plates (11, 12). Plate (11) is of transparent material and, sandwiched between itself and the gel is a metal layer comprising a mosaic (21) of silver dots. Light from a source (14) is directed via a reflector (16) and undergoes total internal reflection at the interface between plate (11) and metal layer (21). The reflected light is passed via reflector (17) to a light detector (15). The equipment is arranged so that SPR occurs at the metal layer, which resonance is critically dependent upon the refractive index of the gel (10). The structure comprising the light source 14 and detector 15, together with reflectors 16 and 17 is caused to scan across the gel surface to enable a two-dimensional representation of the changes in refractive index across the gel to be built up. This enables the progress of sequencing to be monitored.