D-Shaped Photonic Crystal Fiber Plasmon Sensors Based on Self-Reference Channel

Abstract

We present a D-shaped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) plasmon sensor based on a large-hole self-reference channel for applications in biological and chemical sensing. Both the Plasmon's fundamental linear-polarization LP <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">01</sub> and high-order LP <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">11</sub> modes are excited at the interface between the analyte and the silver film based on results of the numerical calculation method. We obtained the transmitted spectrum of the guided mode LP <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">01</sub> in the D-shaped PCF. We found that the peak spectral wavelength of the sensor increases when the refractive index of the analyte increases. The spectral sensitivity clearly increases with the silver film's thickness on the sensor's platform, although it is unaffected by other variations of the PCF's geometry. We obtained an optimal spectral sensitivity for the sensor of 3191.43nm/RIU for a silver film thickness of 50nm.