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.
The present work describes the fabrication and characterization of an optical fiber pH sensor using a sol–gel technique. The sensing head configuration is incorporated using a short section of no-core fiber, coated with tetraethyl orthosilicate and spliced at the end of a single mode fiber with a bulge. Different types of indicators (bromophenol blue, cresol red, and chlorophenol red) were used to achieve a wide pH range from 2 to 13. High sensitivities of the fabricated device were found to be 1.02 and −0.93 nm/pH for acidic and alkaline solutions, respectively. From the characterization results, it was noted that there is an impact of ionic strength and an effect of the temperature of liquid on the response characteristic, which is an advantage of the existing device over the other pH sensors. The fabricated sensor exhibited good reflection spectrum, indicating a blueshift in resonance wavelength for alkaline solutions and a redshift for acidic solutions.
A silicone rubber-coated Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is proposed and applied to temperature measurement. The MZI is fabricated by splicing single mode fiber between a short section of no-core fiber (NCF) and the ultra-abrupt taper region. The sensing length of MZI is coated with liquid silicone rubber to enhance the temperature sensitivity. Here, NCF is used to excite the higher order cladding mode, the ultra-abrupt taper region acts as a optical fiber coupler, and the silicone rubber coating on sensing length is used as solid cladding material instead of liquid. The enhancement of the sensitivity of a device is due to the high refractive index (1.42) and thermo-optic coefficient (−1.4×10−4/°C) of silicone rubber as compared to liquid cladding temperature sensors. The experiment was performed for both coated and uncoated MZI and the results were compared. The MZI exhibits a high temperature sensitivity of 253.75 and 121.26 pm/°C for coated and uncoated sensing probes, respectively, in the temperature range from 30°C to 75°C.
A reflectance-based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) fiber sensor with enhanced sensitivity for biochemical sensing is reported after comparing its result with the transmittance-based SPR optical fiber sensors. The fabricated SPR sensor contains a gold-coated multimode fiber with the implementation of a standard source-sensor-spectrometer interrogation system. As the refractive index of the liquid under test is increased, a redshift of the SPR is observed. The coupling of the source to the fiber sensor is optimized by investigating the effect of an intentional misalignment in transmission-based setup. When a fiber tip coated with the silver mirror and the bifurcated fiber bundle is used, an alignment-free disposable sensor probe is achieved. A comprehensive characterization of the proposed reflectance-based SPR probe is discussed. The maximum sensitivity of 3212.19 nm/refractive index unit (RIU) is obtained.
We reported the modeling result of selectively magnetic fluid infiltrated dual-core photonic crystal fiber based magnetic field sensor. Inside the cross-section of the designed photonic crystal fiber, the two fiber cores filled with magnetic fluid (Fe3O4) form two independent waveguides with mode coupling. The mode coupling under different magnetic field strengths is investigated theoretically. The sensitivity of the sensor as a function of the structural parameters of the photonic crystal fiber is calculated. The result shows that the proposed sensing device with 1 cm photonic crystal fiber length has a large sensitivity of 305.8 pm/Oe.
Access to the requested content is limited to institutions that have purchased or subscribe to SPIE eBooks.
You are receiving this notice because your organization may not have SPIE eBooks access.*
*Shibboleth/Open Athens users─please
sign in
to access your institution's subscriptions.
To obtain this item, you may purchase the complete book in print or electronic format on
SPIE.org.
INSTITUTIONAL Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.
PERSONAL Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.