Highly Sensitive Surface Plasmon Resonance Based Photonic Crystal Fiber Refractive Index Sensor

Abstract

This paper represents a highly sensitive octagonal lattice photonic crystal fiber (PCF) for refractive index (RI) sensing. Gold is externally coated to support surface plasmons which is chemically stable. The numerical investigations are based on finite element method which show that the maximum wavelength and amplitude sensitivity of the proposed sensor is 28,000 nm/RIU and 1962.63 RIU−1 respectively in x polarization for a wide sensing range from 1.35 to 1.44. Besides, the maximum confinement loss of 0.28617 dB/cm as well as the highest refractive index resolution of 3.57×10−6 RIU in x polarization are gained for this biosensor. This suggested design can acts as a favourable device for detecting any unknown biochemical and biomolecule analytes as it provides high sensitivity, great sensing resolution and low loss.