Hollow-core silver coated photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensor

We propose a simple hollow-core circular lattice photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) refractive index sensor. The sensing performance is investigated by using the finite element method (FEM). Silver is used as the plasmonic material for this design, which is placed on the outer surface of the PCF to facilitate the fabrication. The proposed sensor shows a maximum wavelength sensitivity of 4200 nm/RIU with a sensor resolution of 2.38 x 10(-5) RIU. Besides, a maximum amplitude sensitivity of 300 RIU-1 and a resolution of 3.33 x 10(-5) RIU is reported for an analyte refractive index of 1.37. Moreover, the effect of varying structural parameters on the sensing performance such as pitch, air hole diameter and silver layer thickness are also discussed thoroughly. Sensitivity analysis of the proposed sensor is performed in order to investigate the impact on loss depth and amplitude sensitivity. Thanks to high sensitivity and linearity characteristics, the proposed sensor can be potentially employed in practical bio-sensing and chemical sensing applications. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.