Design and Performance Analysis of a Silver-Coated Microstructure Optical Fiber Plasmonic Sensor

Abstract

In this manuscript, a highly amplitude sensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based microstructure optical fiber (MOF) or photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based plasmonic biosensor is proposed and numerically analyzed. To make a simple and straightforward design, the proposed structure is demonstrated consisting of all circular air holes with an external coating of metal and sensing layer, unlike the coating of inner air-hole (s). Sensing characteristics are investigated with the modal analysis based finite element method (FEM). The numerical performance shows that the maximum amplitude and wavelength sensitivity of 3731 RIU-1 and 9000 nm/RIU with the analyte detection range from 1.36-1.40. Because of the high sensitivity, simple structure, and excellent polynomial characteristics, the proposed sensor can be a promising candidate for the detection of various biochemical and biological samples (DNA, mRNA, proteins, sugar) detection.