The present study reports on the numerical investigation carried out on a newly designed photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based plasmonic sensor for sensitivity enhancement and wide range refractive index (RI) detection. Gold (Au) is used as active plasmonic material and an additional overlayer of tantalum pentoxide (Ta2O5) is used. This study presents the detail sensor performance without and with the Ta2O5 overlayer by using finite element method (FEM) and the sensor performance is analyzed using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomena. Maximum sensitivity of 9500 nm/RIU is reported in this study. Because of the tunable nature of the proposed sensor it is possible to detect a wide range of analyte RI from 1.32 to 1.40. Besides, coating of Ta2O5 overlayer results an enhancement of sensitivity. This study proposed a new designing technology to tune its operation range followed by sensitivity enhancement as per authors best knowledge. Moreover, as the wide detection range falls into the analyte of biological interest, so, after proper functionalization the proposed sensor can be treated with biorecognition elements and finally biofunctionalized sensing probe can be applicable as potential biosensor.
A plasmonic refractive index (RI) sensor based on photonic crystal fiber is proposed. A chemically stable thin film of gold (Au) is used as an active plasmonic layer and high RI material Ta2O5 is used as an overlayer over the gold thin film. The effect of Ta2O5 thin film on the sensor performance is analyzed in detail and a novel, as per the authors’ best knowledge, operating analyte RI range tunable property is reported. It is observed that the operating range is tuned toward the lower RI region with increasing Ta2O5 layer thickness. Furthermore, the sensor is optimized and its sensitivity is realized using both wavelength and amplitude interrogation techniques. A maximum wavelength sensitivity and amplitude sensitivity of 16,354 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) and 1574 RIU − 1, respectively, are obtained corresponding to the operating RI range of 1.39 to 1.41 for the optimized structure. Moreover, the detection accuracy of the sensor is found of the order of 10 − 6 with a high figure of merit up to 282 representing an overall good sensing performance. The sensor performance is realized using surface plasmon resonance phenomenon and numerically analyzed using finite element method. Our study, no doubt, provides a new direction of designing RI sensor that could tune the RI range to the desired operating range. In addition, the simple design feasibility, low fabrication cost, and portable nature of the proposed sensor make it suitable for industrial and chemical sensing applications.
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