Highly sensitive SPR based PCF sensor for broader analyte detection range including blood compositions detection

Abstract

In this manuscript, a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based sensor working on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) concept, which is polished at both the sides and consisting of semi-circular grooves is presented for the detection of a broad range of analytes with refractive index (RI) from 1.17 to 1.40. Also, the analysis is carried out for the diagnosis of different blood compositions such as water, plasma, white blood cells (WBCs), hemoglobin (HB) and red blood cells (RBCs). Plasmonic material gold is coated in the semi-circular grooves, which causes the strong SPR effect due to reduced distance between core and analyte resulting in excellent detection of the analytes. Thus, the optimum wavelength sensitivity and resolution in the case of broad analyte range detection with RI from 1.17 to 1.40 is obtained as 13000 nm/RIU and 7.7×10⁻⁶ RIU respectively. Also, blood composition detection using the proposed sensor results in excellent sensing performance with the maximum wavelength sensitivity for hemoglobin-RBCs as 11,500 nm/RIU with finer resolution of 8.69×10⁻⁶ RIU.