Numerical analysis of a photonic crystal fiber based on two polarized modes for biosensing applications

Abstract

This paper presents a theoretical study on a photonic crystal fiber plasmonic refractive index biosensor. The proposed photonic crystal fiber sensor introduces the concept of simultaneous detection with the linearly polarized and radially polarized modes because the sensing performance of the sensor based on both modes is relatively high, which will be useful for selecting the modes to make the detection accurately. The sharp single resonant peaks of the linearly polarized mode and radially polarized mode, are stronger and more sensitive to the variation of analyte refractive index than that of any other polarized mode in this kind of photonic crystal fiber. For linearly polarized mode and radially polarized mode, the maximum sensitivities of 10448.5 nm per refractive index unit and 8230.7 nm per refractive index unit can be obtained, as well as 949.8 and 791.4 for figure of merits in the sensing range of 1.33–1.45, respectively. Compared with the conventional Au-metalized surface plasmon resonance sensors, our device is better and can be applied as a biosensor.