Design and Analysis of Plasmonic Temperature Sensor Utilizing Photonic Crystal Fiber

Abstract

In this paper, a simple geometric structured Photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based temperature sensor is proposed and analyzed theoretically. The designed sensor considered polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as a temperature dependent analyte to sense the variation of temperature with its surroundings. To enhance the sensitivity and avoid corrosion due to oxidation, gold (Au) film is used as plasmonic material. While analyzing the performance of the sensor, the finite element method (FEM) is utilized. Also, performance characterization is done altering the design parameters, e.g., pitch, air-holes diameter, and thickness of the gold layer. The results reveal a maximum possible spectral sensitivity of 4.67 nm/°C, with the detection range 30 °C to 90 °C. The sensor also exhibits a standard FOM valuing of 0.05838 /°C and a resolution of 3 × 10−2 °C. Considering simple structure and excellent spectral sensitivity, the proposed sensor can be applied in myriad fields to measure the temperature.