D-Shaped Surface Plasmon Photonic Crystal Fiber Temperature Sensor

Abstract

A D-shaped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with high sensitivity and high figure of merit is presented in this paper. To enhance surface plasmon resonance, the gold film is deposited on the polished flat of D-shaped photonic crystal fiber. Ethanol and chloroform are employed as temperature-sensitive materials, which are placed on the outside of the fiber to detect temperature changes. When the phase-matching condition is met, the core mode couples with the surface plasma mode. The finite element method is used to perform all numerical simulations of sensor characteristics in the COMSOL software. The results show that the highest sensitivity of the sensor can reach 6.36 nm/°C and the maximum figure of merit (FOM) is 0.3440/°C in the range of −5 ~ 60 °C. To our knowledge, the achieved sensing characteristics are significantly better than those of the current PCF temperature sensors. Furthermore, excellent linearity with a polynomial fit R2 as high as 0.9981. The proposed sensor has exceptional performance in terms of temperature detection range, sensitivity, FOM, and fabrication, making it suitable for a wide variety of biochemical and medical applications.