Surface plasmon resonance based fiber optic sensor utilizing indium oxide

A highly sensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based fiber optic sensor with indium oxide (In2O3) layer coated on the core of the optical fiber is presented and theoretically analyzed. The sensitivity of the SPR based fiber optic sensor has been evaluated numerically. It is shown that the proposed SPR based fiber optic sensor with In2O3 layer possesses high sensitivity in the near infrared region of spectrum, which needs attention to many environmental and security applications and offers more accurate and highly reproducible measurements. In addition, the sensitivity of the SPR based fiber optic sensor decreases with the increase in the thickness of In2O3 layer. With sensitivity as high as 4600 nm/RIU, the 170 nm thick In2O3 layer based fiber optic SPR sensor demonstrates better performance. (C) 2013 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved.