High sensitivity property of dual-core photonic crystal fiber temperature sensor based on surface plasmon resonance

Abstract

In this paper, we design and simulate a dual core photonic crystal fiber (DC-PCF) temperature sensor in terms of wavelength sensitivity. The dual core design of the PCF makes it possible to deposit the gold (plasmonic material) layer and analyte (high temperature coefficient liquid) outside the PCF thus makes the fabrication easier. The sensor performance is demonstrated with the help of Matlab environment as well as the finite element method (FEM). Different loss spectra with the variation of temperature has been analyzed. The computational result shows that a wide range of temperature from 0 °C to 60 °C can be detected to investigate the sensor performance. The designed sensor exhibits flat wavelength sensitivity of 2.25 nm/°C with a sensor resolution of 4.44 × 10−2 for y-polarized light. In order to achieve high sensitivity, the structural parameters such as air hole diameter, pitch, gold thickness and core diameter are optimized. In view of wide detection range of temperature and flat sensitivity, this DC-PCF temperature sensor can be a promising candidate for various applications such as for the real time detection of the temperature of manufacturing industry, medical environment, electric vehicle, transformer oil etc.