Design and optimization of index-guiding photonic crystal fiber gas sensor

An index guiding photonic crystal fiber used in gas sensing applications is presented. The dependency of the confinement loss and relative sensitivity on the fiber parameters and wavelength is numerically investigated by using the full-vectorial finite element method (FEM). The simulations showed that the gas sensing sensitivity increased with an increase in the core diameter and a decrease in the distance between centers of two adjacent holes. Increasing the hole size of two outer cladding rings, this structure simultaneously showed up to 10% improved sensitivity, and the confinement loss reached 6×10 -4 times less than that of the prior sensor at the wavelength of 1.5 μm. This proved the ability of this fiber used in gas and chemicals sensing applications. © 2013 The Author(s).