A surface plasmon resonance haemoglobin concentration sensor based on D-type optical fibre with a graphene-gold surface architecture

In this study, a surface plasmon resonance sensor for detecting haemoglobin concentration based on a D-type optical fibre with a graphene-gold surface architecture is proposed. The graphene-gold surface architecture included a 50 nm thick gold film and monolayer graphene film, which were decorated on a 10 mm long D-type sensing region. The proposed sensor worked in wavelength interrogation mode, with the light wavelength ranging from 400 to 1100 nm. The authors realised the D-type optical fibre surface polishing process, the gold film vacuum coating process, and the chemical-vapour-deposited graphene's wet transfer process. Furthermore, the fabricated sensors were used to detect the refractive index (RI) of haemoglobin samples, which varied from 1.331 to 1.346. Experiment results show that the fitted RI sensitivity of the sensor decorated with gold and graphene reaches 1874.41 nm/RIU, 4.995% higher than that of the sensor decorated only with gold. The concentration sensitivity of the sensor coated with gold and graphene film is 4.96 nm/(g/dL), and the proposed sensor can provide a resolution of 20.2 mg/dL for haemoglobin concentration detection.