Abstract
An optical fiber sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is proposed for monitoring the thickness of deposited nano-thin films. A side-polished multimode SPR optical fiber sensor with an 850 nm-LD is used as the transducing element for real-time monitoring of the deposited TiO2 thin films. The SPR optical fiber sensor was installed in the TiO2 sputtering system in order to measure the thickness of the deposited sample during TiO2 deposition. The SPR response declined in real-time in relation to the growth of the thickness of the TiO2 thin film. Our results show the same trend of the SPR response in real-time and in spectra taken before and after deposition. The SPR transmitted intensity changes by approximately 18.76% corresponding to 50 nm of deposited TiO2 thin film. We have shown that optical fiber sensors utilizing SPR have the potential for real-time monitoring of the SPR technology of nanometer film thickness. The compact size of the SPR fiber sensor enables it to be positioned inside the deposition chamber, and it could thus measure the film thickness directly in real-time. This technology also has potential application for monitoring the deposition of other materials. Moreover, in-situ real-time SPR optical fiber sensor technology is in inexpensive, disposable technique that has anti-interference properties, and the potential to enable on-line monitoring and monitoring of organic coatings.
Highlights
IntroductionSurface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been used in a wide range of chemical and biological sensing applications
Over the past decade, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been used in a wide range of chemical and biological sensing applications
We compared of the deposited sample with the SPR response of an optical fiber to demonstrate the possibility of in-situ real-time monitoring
Summary
Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) has been used in a wide range of chemical and biological sensing applications. Studies of SPR sensing systems have been focused on the attenuated total reflection geometry obtained by use of prism-coupling optics. Those systems of optical fiber sensors need bulky structures as well as complicated signal processing to improve their high sensitivity. Quartz crystal monitors are available as an in-situ monitoring tool, but they only offer an indirect measurement of the thickness of a film grown on a surface [18,19] To overcome these limitations, we have proposed a new in-situ monitoring technique utilizing a side-polished multimode optical fiber sensor based on surface plasmon resonance to measure the thickness of deposited nano-thin films
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