Simulation design of silver nanoparticle coated photonic crystal fiber sensor based on surface plasmon resonance

Abstract

Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) is the charge density excitation oscillation (surface Plasmon’s, (SP)) caused by the polarized light along with the metal-dielectric interface by agreeing to phase-matching condition between polarized light and SPR. SPR method has unusual advantages like label-free, real-time and high resolutions with less than 10-7 RIU which is not consenting with other sensing methods. Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) presents unique features like design elasticity, geometric flexible and extraordinary guiding mechanism which head for better performance contrast conventional optical fibre, Additionally, the presence of air holes gives the possibility to insert multi able materials, that can recognize the interaction of travelling light and materials operatively. Adding the advantages of PCF to the properties of SPR, lead to design very strong and unique devices in different applications. In this paper, the PCF sensor based on SPR technique had been presented. The inner holes of PCF were coated with silver and then filled with air and ethanol. This was achieved theoretically by Finite Element Method (FEM). When the phase-matching condition was achieved at a fixed wavelength, the energy of the core-guided mode is shifted to the plasmon area and a resonant loss peak is observed at this wavelength. The simulated results show that a blue shifting is obtained when the outer air holes of PCF is filling with ethanol while the inner ring is filled with silver nano-particles. The maximum resolution and sensitivity are 5.66*10-4 RIU, 132.3 nm/RIU respectively in the sensing range of air refractive index to ethanol refractive index are obtained. The submitted design could be very useful in many fields like refractive index and temperature sensing applications.