Enhanced Sensitivity of Open Channel SPR-Based PCF Sensor Employing Plasmonic Materials for Analyte Sensing

Highly sensitive photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensors based on the spectacle of surface plasmonic resonance (SPR) are analyzed numerically and demonstrated. The finite element method (FEM) technique is used to examine detection performance. This study, an SPR-based PCF structure, has been proposed which achieved a maximum amplitude sensitivity of 573.83 RIU−1 and wavelength sensitivity of 6000 nm/RIU at refractive index (RI) of 1.39. Plasmonic materials such as gold (Au) and titanium dioxide (TiO2) have been implied inside the open channels of the PCF as a thin layer. The study explores different types of effects of detecting variation of gold thickness. The work also uses the simple appearance of air holes and pitch variation to achieve the best level detection performance. Moreover, a simplified geometry of SPR-based PCF has been proposed to trim the complexity of the manufacturing process. With an improved sensitivity performance, the benefit of the sensor will also make promising progress towards the detection of unknown biological analyte.