Magnetron Sputtering Coated Optical Fiber Probe Designs for Surface Plasmon Resonance Sensor

Abstract

In this paper, we have reported the design of the surface plasmon resonance probes prepared from partially etched polymer optical probe and specially tapered single-mode fiber tip probe which are gold coated in magnetron-sputtering unit. The coating parameters and conditions are discussed in details to achieve sensitive surface plasmon resonance probes. The sensor probes work in transmission modes. The gold-coated etched in-line polymer fiber probe demonstrates high sensitivity, ~2459 nm/RIU and working range includes visible to infrared wavelength. The fiber tip probe with very small interaction area demonstrates sensitivity, ~166 nm/RIU. The in-line fiber probe could be used for large volume sample and the pointed fiber tip could be used for small volume samples.