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This article has been accepted for publication in a future issue of this journal, but has not been fully edited. Content may change prior to final publication. Citation information: DOI 10.1109/JSTQE.2020.2993866, IEEE Journal
Abstract—An ultra-wide detection range refractive-index
sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with photonic
crystal fiber (PCF) is designed and discussed. The central air-hole
of the fiber is injected with the analyte. The properties of
refractive-index sensor are investigated with different structure
parameters. Simulation results show that the proposed sensor has
an ultra-wide detection range from 1.29 to 1.49. The refractive
index sensitivities of x-polarized and y-polarized core mode are
-4156.82 nm/RIU and -3703.64 nm/RIU respectively, and the
corresponding linear fitting degrees are 0.99598 and 0.99236. The
designed refractive-index sensor with ultra-wide detection range
has a great potential in the fields of biology, chemistry,
environment and medicine.
Index Terms—Refractive index sensor, Surface plasmon
resonance, Photonic crystal fiber.
I. INTRODUCTION
S a basic property of matter, refractive index detection
has many applications in water quality monitoring,
concentration measurement, food quality control and industrial
production. Up to now, many effective approaches have been
proposed for achieving the measurement of the refractive index,
such as using Fabry-Perot structure [1],
polarization-maintaining fiber [2], fiber Bragg grating [3] and
long-period fiber grating [4]. However, these methods still have
the problem that needs to be solved in low refractive-index
sensitivity, narrow refractive-index detection rang and so on.
It has been proved that Surface plasmon wave (SPW) can be
used to enhance the sensitivity by forming electromagnetic
oscillation on the surface of metal [5]. When the incident wave
transmits at the certain wavelength range and the near-field
wave vector equals to the SPW wave vector, the resonance will
occur. As a result, the energy of incident light is coupled to the
SPW wave, and the loss of guide light shows a sharp increase at
the resonant wavelength. Considering that the change of the
refractive index in the external environment has an effect on the
SPW wave vector, surface plasmon resonance (SPR) can be
This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China.
(973 Program) (Grant number: 2010CB327801), the National Natural Science
Foundation of China (Grant number: 10874128). (Corresponding author: Ying
Lu) and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (Grant No.
18JCQNJC71200).
The authors are with the College of Precision Instrument and
Opto-Electronics Engineering, Key Laboratory of Opto-Electronics
Information Technology, Ministry of Education, Tianjin University, Tianjin
300072, China (e-mail: guangyao_wang@126.com; luying@tju.edu.cn;
dlc@tju.edu.cn; jqyao@tju.edu.cn).
employed to construct refractive-index sensors. Early SPR
refractive index sensors are mainly based on prism coupling
[6-8]. However, due to the large size, their applications are
limited. In order to promote the miniaturization, some
refractive-index sensors based on fiber-coupled SPR
subsequently appear [9-11]. Though the sizes of these sensors
are reduced, the detection range still needs to improve.
Photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with a wavelength-scale
periodic microstructure running along their length [12-14]
possesses unique properties and flexible designs. Compared to
the traditional SPR refractive-index sensors, the PCF-based
SPR sensors can improve the detection range effectively. The
earliest PCF-based SPR sensor was proposed by Hassani et al.
in 2006 [15]. The authors analysed the coupling mechanism
between fundamental modes of the microstructured fiber and
SPWs in details. It proves the correctness and feasibility of this
method. In 2012, Shuai et al. proposed and numerically
analysed a multi-core PCF-SPR sensor [16]. The results
showed that both of phase matching and loss matching played a
key role in the coupling process between fundamental modes
and plasmon modes. The refractive-index sensitivities were
2929.39nm/RIU and 9231nm/RIU in the detection range from
1.33 to 1.42 and from 1.43 to 1.53, respectively. This report
layed a foundation for wide range measurement of PCF-SPR
sensors. Subsequently, for the convenience of detection,
researchers proposed a D-type PCF-SPR sensor with one end
flattened. In 2016, we designed a D-shaped PCF refractive
index sensor based on SPR [17]. An average sensitivity of
12450 nm/RIU was obtained, when the external refractive
index changes from 1.345 to 1.410. In 2018, An et al. proposed
an ultra-stable D-shaped optical fiber refractive index sensor
with graphene-gold deposited platform [18]. A maximum
wavelength sensitivity of 4391 nm/RIU was achieved in the
refractive index range from 1.33 to 1.39. Although the
sensitivities of the sensors mentioned above are large enough,
the refractive index detection ranges are small, which still
limits the application of sensors.
In this paper, we propose an ultra-wide detection range
refractive-index sensor based on PCF. The air holes in the
cladding have a triangle lattice, and the air hole in the centre of
fiber core is used to inject the liquid to be tested. In order to
obtain a wider detection-range and a higher sensitivity, we
discuss the properties of PCFs with two gold-filled air holes
and two gold-coated air holes. The results illustrate that when
there are two gold-filled air holes in the y direction and two big
air holes in the x direction, the widest detection range is
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