Single-mode D-shaped photonic crystal fiber surface plasmon resonance sensor with open microchannel

Abstract

Accessible microchannels that allow microscale fluid control and microparticle-filtering are promising tools for advanced biological and chemical sensing and analysis. To this end, we proposed a d-shaped photonic crystal fiber surface plasmon resonance sensor with open microchannel. The optical characteristics of the sensor were numerically investigated using the Finite Element Method and the fiber structure was then fabricated using a standard stack-and-draw method. The numerical results demonstrate that the d-shaped photonic crystal fiber can be applied as a sensor with wide refractive index detection range between 1.330 and 1.435, a maximum sensitivity of 28400 nm/RIU, finest resolution of 3.52 × 10−6 RIU, and maximum figure-of-merit of 592 RIU−1. The sensor operates in the single-mode regime, has good linearity range, requires simple fabrication, has high coupling efficiency with conventional single-mode fibers, and has low losses, making it a practical candidate for wide range of applications in chemical and biological testing.