Highly sensitive photonic crystal fiber biosensor based on alternative plasmonic material

Abstract

In this paper, we study the use of Titanium Nitride (TiN) as a new alternative plasmonic material to achieve a highly sensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) photonic crystal fiber (PCF) biosensor. The TiN has unique properties that make it an ideal material for nanofabrication, where TiN is highly stable, highly conductive, and corrosion resistant. Full vectorial finite element method is used with perfectly matched layer (PML) as boundary conditions to analyze the suggested biosensor. By analyzing the geometrical parameters of the proposed biosensor, a refractive index sensitivity of 7700 nm/RIU and 3600 nm/RIU are obtained for quasi-transverse electric (TE) and quasi transverse magnetic (TM) modes, respectively. The reported biosensor has a high linearity for detecting an unknown analyte refractive index ranging from 1.32 to 1.34. Further, fabrication of the proposed biosensor could be done using standard PCF fabrication current technologies.