A study of highly sensitive D-shaped optical fiber surface plasmon resonance based refractive index sensor using grating structures of Ag-TiO2 and Ag-SnO2

In this study, we propose a design and simulation of a highly sensitive surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based single-mode D-shaped optical fiber refractive index sensor in the near-infrared (NIR) region. It consists grating structure of silver coated with titanium dioxide (TiO2) and Tin dioxide (SnO2) layer on the core-cladding interface. With the help of the finite element method (FEM), the proposed optical fiber sensors are optimized with various geometrical parameters. Proposed optimized structures are investigated and various performance parameters are calculated. It is found that performance parameters enhance with TiO2/SnO2 coated on Ag grating structure at a particular thickness of TiO2/SnO2. Due to this more generations of surface plasmons take place on metal-metal oxide structures. We find the maximum sensitivity of 15.31 mu m / RIU and 9.81 mu m / RIU for Ag-TiO2 and Ag-SnO2 grating structure respectively which shows a better result in comparison to the other reported work. So proposed structure may have great potential to enhance the sensing ability of optical fiber-based sensors as compared to the other conventional SPR based optical fiber sensors.

Automated summary

This study proposes a highly sensitive SPR-based single-mode D-shaped optical fiber refractive index sensor in the NIR region. By optimizing the structure and adding TiO2/SnO2 coatings, the proposed sensor achieves better performance and maximum sensitivity.