Gold nanowire assisted highly sensitive hollow fiber temperature sensor

Abstract

This article numerically analyzed a simple and unique side-opening hollow fiber-based plasmonic sensor for temperature measurement. The large hollow core of fiber is utilized as a microfluidic channel to place gold nanowire and to fill analytes through the opening. The commercially available COMSOL Multiphysics simulation software with is used to investigate the sensor performance. The SPR effect between core guided mode and plasmonic mode of the designed sensor is used as a sensing principle to measure the refractive index (RI) of the filled analyte. The average temperature sensitivity of 6.59 nm/℃ is obtained, and the sensor also exhibits good resolution and figure of merit of 1.25 × 10−6 RIU and 302.67 RIU−1 respectively. Moreover, the relation between temperature and resonance wavelength is strongly linear and well suitable for standardization. The impact of manufacturing errors such as opening size discrepancy and nanowire dislocation also have been studied and no considerable effects were observed. Hence, the proposed sensor is very effective in terms of cost and design for the realization and could be potentially used in real-time and in-situ measurements. This sensor can be effectively used for liquid measurements whose RIs are slightly higher than the silica tube, such as benzene, toluene, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform, glycerin and kerosene.