PCF Based Sensor with High Sensitivity, High Birefringence and Low Confinement Losses for Liquid Analyte Sensing Applications

Huseyin Ademgil,Shyqyri Haxha

doi:10.3390/s151229891

Abstract

In this paper, we report a design of high sensitivity Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) sensor with high birefringence and low confinement losses for liquid analyte sensing applications. The proposed PCF structures are designed with supplementary elliptical air holes in the core region vertically-shaped V-PCF and horizontally-shaped H-PCF. The full vectorial Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations performed to examine the sensitivity, the confinement losses, the effective refractive index and the modal birefringence features of the proposed elliptical air hole PCF structures. We show that the proposed PCF structures exhibit high relative sensitivity, high birefringence and low confinement losses simultaneously for various analytes.

Highlights

Fiber optic technology was primarily developed for telecommunication applications
It is important to emphasize that, unlike traditional polarization-maintaining fibers [25], which comprise at least of two types of glass material, each one with a different thermal coefficient, the birefringence obtainable with Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) is highly insensitive to temperature, which is a significant feature for various sensing applications, as it is well known that the temperature cross-sensitivity affects the measurement accuracy of the optical sensors
In order to achieve high birefringence, high sensitivity and low confinement losses simultaneously, elliptical air holes have been constructed in the cladding and in the core region

Summary

Introduction

Fiber optic technology was primarily developed for telecommunication applications. due to the advances in fabrication technology optical fibers have contributed to the expansion of guided wave technology for sensing applications. Various research studies of these mirostructured fibers have demonstrated that outstanding dispersion properties [7,10], endlessly single-mode guidance [11], light guidance in lower index material [12], high birefringence [9,10] and enhanced nonlinear effects [8] can be achieved for wide wavelength ranges.

Results

Conclusion