Abstract
In this article, an efficient high birefringent D-shaped photonic crystal fiber (HB-D-PCF) plasmonic refractive index sensor is reported. It is able to work over a long low refractive index analyte range from 1.29 to 1.36. This modified simple structured hexagonal PCF has high birefringence in the near-infrared region. A thin gold film protected by a titanium dioxide (TiO2) layer is deposited on the D-surface of the PCF which acts as surface plasmon active layer. The sensor consists of an analyte channel on the top of the fiber. The performance of the HB-D-PCF is analyzed based on finite element method. Both wavelength and amplitude interrogation techniques are applied to study the sensing performance of the optimized sensor. Numerical results show wavelength and amplitude sensitivity of 9245 nm/RIU and 1312 RIU−1 respectively with high resolution. Owing to the high sensitivity, long range sensing ability as well as spectral stability the designed HB-D-PCF SPR sensor is a potential candidate for water pollution control, glucose concentration testing, biochemical analyte detection as well as portable device fabrication.
Highlights
In the current century, demand for portable, lightweight, long-range, highly sensitive sensors are in peak due to the faster technical development. To satisfy this need intense research work is being performed in the field of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) incorporated optical sensors
The working principle of this HB-D-PCF is governed by coupled mode theory (CMT)
The reason behind this is that neff of core mode and surface plasmon polarization (SPP) mode are close to refractive index (RI) of silica fiber and na respectively
Summary
Demand for portable, lightweight, long-range, highly sensitive sensors are in peak due to the faster technical development. High RI transparent TiO2 layer protects the gold layer from corrosion as well as enhances the coupling between the evanescent waves of core guided light and external analyte To realize this HB-D-PCF sensing probe practically, it is suggested to incorporate a thin (≤5nm) TiO2 layer between the fiber (silica) and gold layer. Free space coupling (Heng et al 2016) or recently developed connector technique (Morishima et al 2018) can be applied to launch light at the probe and routed to the OSA (optical spectrum analyzer) (Wu et al 2017) Considering all these aspects and currently available fiber technology, we authors are hopeful regarding the real-time applicability of this sensor. After the fabrication the probe should be attached with a rigid platform to avoid the deterioration of the sensor performance
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