JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS

2020, VOL. 67, NO. 20, 1545–1554

[Link]

Ultra-sensitive hexagonal PCF-SPR sensor with a broad detection range

Wei Liua , Chunjie Hub , Lei Zhouc , Zao Yid , Chao Liua , Jingwei Lva , Lin Yanga and Paul K. Chue
a School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing, People’s Republic of China; b Department of
Gynecology and Obstetrics, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, People’s Republic of China; c Department of
Orthopedics, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, People’s Republic of China; d Joint Laboratory for Extreme
Conditions Matter Properties, Southwest University of Science and Technology, Mianyang, People’s Republic of China; e Department of Physics,
Department of Materials Science & Engineering, and Department of Biomedical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon, Hong
Kong, People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

A photonic crystal fibre (PCF) sensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with a hexagonal Received 4 December 2020
structure and external gold coating is designed and demonstrated to have a broad detection range Accepted 2 January 2021
and ultra-high sensitivity. Gold is chosen as the plasmonic materials due to the inert and stable KEYWORDS
chemical properties and the gold coating on the PCF-SPR sensor also simplifies the detection and Photonic crystal fibre; surface
fabrication processes. The sensing properties are analysed by the finite element method (FEM). In plasmon resonance;
this sensor, the y-polarized mode with the large mode field area shows better performance such as ultra-high sensitivity; broad
the high spectral sensitivity of 28,700 nm/RIU, wide analyte refractive index (RI) range from 1.28 to detection-scope; finite
1.43, resolution of 3.48×10−6 RIU, and maximum amplitude sensitivity of 2481.06 RIU−1 . Further- element method; external
more, the paragon figure of merit and signal-to-noise ratio of the sensor are 517.81 RIU−1 and 5.18, gold coating
respectively.

1. Introduction
size, the coupling efficiency of the fundamental mode
Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) is an optical phe- and surface plasmon polariton (SPP) mode is relatively
nomenon arising from resonance excitation of free elec- poor. Recently, photonic crystal fibre (PCF) sensors have
tron oscillations at the metal–dielectric interface upon attracted much interest attributing to the wide range,
p-polarized light radiation and subsequent propaga- large mode area, high sensitivity, and flexible structure
tion of the surface plasmon wave (SPW) along the [19,20].
metal–dielectric interface [1–3]. In the optical indus- Photonic crystal fibres (PCFs), also named holey fibres
try, This SPR technology has been applied to optical or micro-structured optical fibres (MOFs), constitute a
absorbers [4,5], fibre sensors [6,7], optical polarizers new class of optical fibres. The claddings on PCFs consist
[8], and other optical devices. In SPR, the environment of tiny and closely spaced air hole arrays for transmis-
influences the trapped electromagnetic wave as well as sion and by regulating the size and arrangement of the
coupling conditions. For instance, the SPR wavelength air holes, the effective refractive index (neff ) of the PCFs
shifts as the refractive index (RI) of the surrounding can be altered. In addition, it is pivotal to achieve phase
medium changes [9–11] thus providing the capability matching for the two modes. As a matter of fact, com-
of fast and real-time detection and label-free monitor- bining PCF and SPR sensing technologies can enhance
ing [12,13]. Hence, SPR techniques have received atten- the sensitivity by modulating the structural parameters
tion in other fields covering genomics, proteomics, drug [21,22] and several types of PCFs based on SPR sens-
screening, environmental monitoring, food quality con- ing have been reported in succession. Shafkat et al. [23]
trol, and medical diagnostics [14–16]. As is well-known, proposed an SPR sensor with a duplex core PCF which
the traditional SPR-RI sensors are based on prism cou- showed a wavelength sensitivity of 10,700 nm/RIU and
pling [17] but suffer from the bulky structure. In order to resolution of 9.34×10−6 RIU for analyte RIs between 1.33
miniaturize the structure, some RI sensors are based on and 1.40. M. Liu [Link] designed a birefringent single-layer
fibre-coupled SPR [18]. However, in spite of the reduced coating PCF-SPR biosensor with wavelength sensitivity

CONTACT Chao Liu msm-liu@[Link] School of Physics and Electronic Engineering, Northeast Petroleum University, Daqing 163318, People’s
Republic of China
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here. [Link]

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

1546 W. LIU ET AL.

of 15,180 nm/RIU for the analyte RIs range of 1.40–1.43 film thickness, the sensor demonstrates a high spectral
corresponding to a resolution of 5.6818 × 10−6 RIU [24]. sensitivity of 28,700 nm/RIU, broad RI range from 1.28 to
J. J. Lu et al studied the D-shaped PCF-SPR sensor with 1.43, resolution of 3.48 × 10−6 RIU, maximum amplitude
gold gratings. The maximum theoretical resolution was sensitivity of 2481.06 RIU−1 , and figure of merit of 517.81
5.98×10−6 RIU in the RI range of 1.36–1.38 and the RIU−1 .
wavelength sensitivity was 3340 nm/RIU [25]. Revathi
et al. presented a dual-core PCF-SPR sensor with wave-
2. Structural design and numerical simulation
length sensitivities of 10,000 and 5000 nm/RIU for x-
polarized mode and y-polarized mode, respectively and Figure 1 depicts the cross-section of the PCF-SPR sen-
the resolution of both polarizations was 2×10−5 RIU sor with a hexagonal structure and circular air holes
[26]. In spite of recent advances, in order to achieve that concentrate the energy into the PCF core. A part
higher sensitivity and wider detection range, it is impor- of the constrained evanescent field is transferred to the
tant to design new high-performance PCF-SPR sensors. external analyte channel and it is coupled with the plas-
Herein, a hexagonal PCF-SPR sensor with an exter- monic metal layer to stimulate surface electrons. The
nal gold coating is designed to achieve a wide detection four smaller air holes on the outside assist in SPR. The
range and ultra-high sensitivity. By optimizing the struc- filling and arrangement of the air holes in the fibre
tural parameters including the size, air holes, and gold make the cladding refractive index slightly less than

Figure 1. (a) Cross-sectional view of the sensor; (b) Stacked arrangement of the cross-section; (c) Lateral view of the stack.
 JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS 1547

that of fibre core. It is a step-type optical fibre which and fabrication processes. At present, the manufactur-
is beneficial to constrain the transmission of incident ing technology and surface coating technology of optical
light in the fibre core to reduce transmission loss and fibre are gradually improved and developed rapidly. The
ensure the transmission of fundamental mode. Based on high pressure chemical vapour deposition (CVD) tech-
the light-guiding mechanism of total internal reflection, nique, thermal evaporation, sputtering technique, elec-
the incident light transmits in the PCF and supports the troless plating technique or wet-chemistry technique can
evanescent field to excite SPR. The background materials be used to deposit the gold film on the PCF surface [3,16].
are composed of fused silica and gold is the plasmonic Additionally, PCF constitutes an excellent SPR platform
materials due to the inert and stable chemical properties. that can be fabricated by the stack-and-draw technique
The external gold coating also simplifies the detection [24,27] as shown in Figure 1(b,c). The characteristics of

Figure 2. (A) Variation of loss for the x/y-polarized mode for RIs between 1.40 and 1.43; (B) Optical field distribution of the x/y-polarized
mode and loss for the same coordinate axis; (C) Dispersion relationship of the fundamental mode, SPP mode, and loss spectrum.
1548 W. LIU ET AL.

the sensor depend on the size and arrangement of the computational accuracy. The confinement loss is calcu-
air holes and the optimal parameters are determined as: lated by Equation (3) [29]:
diameter (d1 ) of the central air hole = 0.8 μm, diameter
(d2 ) of the eight larger air holes = 1.6 μm, and diameter αL (dB/cm) = 8.686 × k0 × Im[neff ] × 104 , (3)
of the rest of the air holes (d3 ) = 0.76 μm. The distance
between the air holes (d1 and d3 ) is the pitch  = 5.4 μm where λ is the operating wavelength in micrometers and
and the gold layer thickness is 40 nm. Im[neff ] stands for the imaginary part of the effective RI.
In the Drude-Lorentz model, dispersion of gold (Au)
is determined by Equation (1) [28]:
3. Results and discussion
ωD2 ε.2L Figure 2(A) describes the dynamic variation of the con-
εAu = ε∞ − − 2 , (1)
ω(ω + jγD ) (ω − 2L ) + jL ω finement loss of the x-polarized and y-polarized modes
for analyte RIs between 1.40 and 1.43. The resonant peaks
where εAu refers to the permittivity of gold, ε ∞ appear when the fundamental mode and SPP mode sat-
stands for the permittivity at a high frequency with isfy the phase matching conditions and the y-polarized
a value of 5.9673, ω = 2π c/λ represents the angular mode is larger and sharper for an analyte RI of 1.43.
frequency, ωD /2π = 2113.6 THz, γ D /2π = 15.92 THz, Figure 2(B) shows the optical field distribution of the
ε = 1.09,  L /2π = 104.86 THz, and L /2π = 650.07 x/y-polarized mode and loss spectrum for the same coor-
THz. Besides, the refractive index of fused silica is calcu- dinate axis, indicating that the resonance effect of the
lated by Sellmeier equation [23]: fundamental mode and SPP mode for y polarization is
more intense and the resonance wavelength shift is larger.
B1 λ2 B2 λ2 B3 λ2 Compared with x-polarized mode, the y-polarized mode
n2 (λ) = 1 + + + , (2)
λ2 − C1 λ2 − C2 λ2 − C3 is coupled with the SPP mode strongly and more light
field energy is transferred from the core of fibre to the
where n is the refractive index of fused silica, λ gold film surface as shown in inset (a) and (b). In addi-
is the wavelength of incident light, B1 = 0.696163, tion, from the perspective of the designed PCF structure
B2 = 0.4079426, B3 = 0.8974794, C1 = 4.67914826× itself, the position arrangement of eight large air holes
10−3 , C2 = 1.35120631×10−2 , and C3 = 97.9340025. around the fibre core makes the longitudinal (y) polar-
The finite element method (FEM) is implemented ization angle smaller than the transverse (x) polarization
with the COMSOL multiphysics software to execute angle, thus exhibiting that the longitudinal (y) mode field
the numerical simulation and analysis. The perfectly area is larger than the transverse (x) mode field area. As
matched layer (PML) as an artificial boundary condition a result, the y-polarized fundamental mode is used to
is adopted to absorb the radiation energy and increase the assess the performance of the sensor in this work.

Figure 3. Confinement loss spectra of the sensor with different air holes: (a) Cntral air hole d1 and (b) Larger air holes in the hexagon d2 .
 JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS 1549

Figure 2(C) shows the dispersion relationship between propagate in the core and the position arrangement forms
the x-polarized fundamental mode and SPP mode of the an unequal polarization state, which can bring about the
optimized structure for n = 1.43. The Re(neff ) values longitudinal (y) mode field area is larger than the trans-
of the fundamental mode (blue–green dotted curve) verse (x) mode field area. The influence of the diameter
and SPP mode (purple dotted curve) are shown in of the larger air holes in the hexagon, d2 , on the confine-
insets (b) and (c) and the variation of the loss spec- ment loss spectra is presented in Figure 3(b). Compared
trum is described by the orange solid curve. At a wave- with the changes of d1 , the resonance wavelength blue-
length of 1249 nm, Re(neff ) of the fundamental mode shifts with increasing d2 . It is indicated that the Re(neff )
and SPP mode is equal and coupling effect between two of SPP mode decreases, while the fundamental mode is
modes takes place. There is also an obvious loss peak invariable [15]. If the diameter of d2 is too large, it will
when the phase matching conditions are satisfied and affect the energy transmission to the outside, which will
when the majority of the energy is transferred from ultimately be detrimental to sensing characteristics of the
the fundamental mode to the SPP mode as shown in sensor.
inset (a). In order to evaluate the dependence between the
The intensity and position of the resonance peak are smaller air holes in the hexagon, d3 , and properties of
regulated by the structural parameters of the PCF-SPR the sensor, the loss spectra are presented in Figure 4(a),
sensor, which have profound inflluence on the sensing which shows that the position of resonance peak is sta-
properties such as sensitivity and resolution. In order ble when d3 decreases form 0.92 to 0.76 μm. Never-
to determine the optimal structural parameters, the RI theless, the resonance peak tends to rise and becomes
of the surrounding analyte is set to be 1.43. Figure 3(a) shaper. Coupling is enhanced between the fundamen-
displays the loss spectra for different central air hole sizes tal mode and SPP mode in the case of d3 = 0.76 μm. It
(d1 ). As d1 increases from 0.4 μm to 0.8 μm, the reso- is certified that the arrangement of four small air holes
nance wavelength red-shifts corresponding to enhance- around the fibre core allows more energy to be trans-
ment of the coupling intensity of the fundamental mode ferred between the fundamental mode and SPP mode,
and SPP mode. It is attributed to that the Re(neff ) of providing the foundation and guarantee for phase match-
the fundamental mode is nearly unchanged, while the ing. To be more exactly, it is helpful to the photons
Re(neff ) of SPP mode increases [15]. Moreover, more in the fibre core and the oscillating free electrons in
energy of the fibre core is transferred from the funda- the metallic surface inspiring each other to generate a
mental mode to SPP mode when the size of the central stronger resonance effect on the interface, thus making
air holes increases. the proposed sensor to achieve better sensing perfor-
The appropriate size design of eight large air holes mance. Figure 4(b) shows the confinement loss spectra
(d2 ) in the cladding constrains most of the light to with changing pitches,  (d1 and d3 ), and the resonance

Figure 4. (a) Confinement loss spectra for different smaller air hole size in the hexagon d3 and (b) Confinement loss spectra for different
pitches  (d1 and d3 ).
1550 W. LIU ET AL.

between the two modes. Therefore, within the appropri-

ate range, the thicker the metal film coated on the fibre
surface, the more free electrons it provides, and the more
likely it is to induce SPR effect.
The PCF-SPR sensor is extremely sensitive to the sur-
roundings and even for a small variation in the analyte
RI, a large resonance wavelength shift occurs. Figure 6
shows the peak wavelength shift for analyte RIs between
1.28 and 1.43. The real part of the effective index (Re(neff) )
of the SPP mode changes with analyte RIs resulting in
red-shift of the resonant wavelength. The correspond-
ing resonance wavelengths are regulated from 539 to
1249 nm. The resonance intensity increases piecemeally
with increasing RIs and the strongest resonance effect
between the fundamental mode and SPP mode occurs at
Figure 5. Confinement loss spectra for different gold film thick- 1500 nm for an RI of 1.43. Therefore, this phenomenon
nesses tAu .
can be exploited to monitor tiny variations of the reso-
nance wavelength. The sensitivity in terms of wavelength
wavelength is almost unchanged. However, the resonant is defined as follows [9]:
peak increases initially and then decreases as  changes
from 5.2 to 5.6 μm, indicating that air hole spacing that λpeak
S(nm/RIU) = , (4)
is either too large or too small will compromise the na
mode matching. Therefore,  = 5.4 μm is the optimal
parameter. where na is the variation of the two successive analyte
The excellent properties of the PCF-SPR sensor are RIs and λpeak denotes the difference peak wavelength
attributed to the plasmonic sensing layer and the thick- shift due to the changing of analyte RIs. The wavelength
ness of the gold film (t Au ) plays a key role in the confine- shift is 108 nm when the analyte RI is varied from 1.41 to
ment loss and sensitivity. Figure 5 shows the influence of 1.42 and the sensitivity is 10,800 nm/RIU. The maximum
the gold film thickness on the loss spectrum for an RI of wavelength shift of 287 nm is observed when the analyte
1.43. The resonant wavelength deviates from the origin RI is varied from 1.42 to 1.43. Therefore, the PCF-SPR
(red-shift) when t Au is varied from 30 nm to 50 nm. How- sensor has a maximum sensitivity of 28,700 nm/RIU.
ever, the confinement loss peak is the largest and sharpest Resolution is another critical parameter and for a
with t Au = 40 nm, indicating more energy to be coupled minimum wavelength resolution (λmin ) of 0.1 nm, the

Figure 6. Confinement loss spectra for different analyte RIs: (a) 1.28–1.35 and (b) 1.36–1.43.
 JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS 1551

Figure 7. (a) Histogram of RW for different analyte RIs and (b) Polynomial fit of analyte RIs.

Figure 8. Amplitude sensitivity for different analyte RIs: (a) 1.28–1.35 and (b) 1.36–1.43.

sensor resolution can be calculated by Equation (5) [30]: To make detection more accurate, the amplitude sen-
sitivity is expressed by Equation (6) [31]:
na λmin
R(RIU) = , (5)
λpeak 1 ∂α(λ, na )
SA (RIU −1 ) = − , (6)
α(λ, na ) ∂na
where na , λpeak , and λmin represent the change of
the nearby dielectrics RI, shift of the resonance peak, and where α(λ, na ) refers to the overall loss when the ana-
estimated minimum detector resolution, respectively. In lyte RI is equal to na and ∂α(λ, na ) stands for the loss
the RI range of 1.28–1.43, the sensor exhibits an eminent between the two adjacent loss spectra. Further, Figure 8
resolution of 3.48×10−6 RIU. Figure 7(a) shows the his- presents the variation of the amplitude sensitivity with
togram of analyte RIs and resonance wavelength and the wavelength and the maximum amplitude sensitivity of
polynomial fit of the resonant wavelengths in Figure 7(b) 2481.06 RIU−1 is achieved at 1249 nm when the analyte
reveals an R–square value of 0.99055. RI is varied from 1.42 to 1.43.
1552 W. LIU ET AL.

Figure 9. Performance of the PCF-SPR sensor: (a) FWHM and FOM and (b) SNR.

Table 1. Analysis of the sensor for different analyte RIs.

Species Sensitivity Amplitude
Analyte RI Loss (dB/cm) RW(nm) (nm/RIU) Sensitivity (RIU−1 ) FOM (RIU−1 ) SNR DetectionLimit
1.28 1.35 539 800 126.93 36.17 0.36 19.01
1.29 1.50 547 800 147.33 35.43 0.35 19.51
1.30 1.67 555 900 161.48 38.98 0.39 19.48
1.31 1.87 564 1100 175.36 46.47 0.46 19.11
1.32 2.11 575 1200 192.92 49.75 0.50 19.15
1.33 2.40 587 1500 203.28 61.36 0.61 18.41
1.34 2.77 602 1600 246.42 64.30 0.64 18.53
1.35 3.22 618 2000 294.14 75.98 0.76 18.80
1.36 3.83 638 2500 345.13 90.86 0.91 18.79
1.37 4.65 663 2900 437.52 98.96 0.99 19.59
1.38 5.83 692 3900 536.96 123.34 1.23 20.00
1.39 7.67 731 5100 674.85 146.94 1.47 21.02
1.40 10.81 782 7200 778.12 179.18 1.79 23.15
1.41 17.03 854 10,800 1154.32 227.51 2.28 25.77
1.42 33.64 962 28,700 2481.06 517.81 5.18 24.50
1.43 241.53 1249 N/A N/A N/A N/A N/A

Besides sensitivity, the figure of merit (FOM) and The loss, resonant wavelength (RW), spectral sensitiv-
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are key indicators and calcu- ity, amplitude sensitivity, figure of merit (FOM), signal-
lated as follows [32,33]: to-noise ratio (SNR), and detection limit in the analyte
RI range of 1.28–1.43 are summarized in Table 1 and
Sλ the comparison with other recently reported sensors is
FOM = (7)
FWHM enumerated in Table 2. It can be observed that this sen-
sor delivers better performance in terms of the detection
and range and sensitivity.
λres
SNR = , (8)
FWHM 4. Conclusion
where FWHM is the full-width at half-maximum of the A high-sensitivity PCF-SPR sensor comprising air holes
confinement loss peak and λres represents the variation arranged hexagonally and gold as the plasmonic mate-
of the resonance wavelength. The best FOM of 517.81 rial is designed and analysed with detail. The y-
RIU−1 and SNR of 5.18 can be acquired for an analyte RI polarization mode delivers better sensing performance.
of 1.43 and the distributions of FWAM, FOM, and SNR The sensor achieves an excellent spectral sensitivity of
of the PCF-SPR sensor are shown in Figure 9. 28,700 nm/RIU for a wide RI range from 1.28 to 1.43
 JOURNAL OF MODERN OPTICS 1553

Table 2. Comparison of the properties of different sensors.

Ref. Characteristics Wav. range (nm) RI range Sensitivity (nm/RIU) Resolution (RIU) Str. diagram
[34] Three-core PCF based SPR sensor 550–950 1.33–1.40 3435 2.91× 10–5

[35] External coated gold PCF-sensor 540–800 1.33–1.37 4000 2.50× 10–5

[36] Hollow-core PCF-SPR sensor 500–800 1.33–1.37 4200 2.38× 10–5

[37] Nano-coutinuous grating sensor 502–793 133–1.36 13,600 7.35 × 10–6

This work Detection-scope broadly sensor 500–1350 1.28–1.43 28,700 3.48 × 10–6

and resolution of 3.48×10−6 RIU. The maximum ampli- crystal fibers for low refractive indexes detection. Results
tude sensitivity is 2481.06 RIU−1 , figure of merit is 517.81 Phys. 2020;18:103240.
[2] Wu Y, Wang XX, Wen XL, et al. Surface-enhanced Raman
RIU−1 , and signal-to-noise ratio is 5.18. The results
scattering based on hybrid surface plasmon excited by Au
reveal an effective strategy to improve the characteris- nanodisk and Au film coupling structure. Phys Lett A.
tics of PCF-SPR sensors for chemical, biomedical and 2020;384:126544.
industrial applications. [3] Rifat AA, Mahdiraji GA, Chow DM, et al. Photonic crystal
fiber-based surface plasmon resonance sensor with selec-
tive analyte channels and graphene-silver deposited core.
Disclosure statement Sensors. 2015;15(5):11499–11510.
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). [4] Qin F, Chen XF, Yi Z, et al. Ultra-broadband and wide-
angle perfect solar absorber based on TiN nanodisk
and Ti thin film structure. Sol Energy Mater Sol Cells.
Funding 2020;211:110535.
[5] Li JK, Chen XF, Yi Z, et al. Broadband solar energy
This work was jointly supported by the National Natural Sci- absorber based on monolayer molybdenum disulfide
ence Foundation of China [grant number 51474069], Natural using tungsten elliptical arrays. Mater Today Energy.
Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province [grant number 2020;16:100390.
E2017010], City University of Hong Kong Strategic Research [6] Liu W, Wang FM, Liu C, et al. A hollow dual-core PCF-
Grant (SRG) [grant number 7005505], Scientific Research Fund SPR sensor with gold layers on the inner and outer sur-
of Sichuan Provincial Science and Technology Department faces of the thin cladding. Results Opt. 2020;1:100004.
[grant number 2020YJ0137], and Local Universities Reforma- [7] Zhang YJ, Tian FJ, Su ZL, et al. Broadband single-
tion and Development Personnel Training Supporting Project polarization optical fiber based on surface plasmon res-
from Central Authorities, [grant number 140119001]. onance. Appl Opt. 2020;59(3):779–784.
[8] Chen SS, Tian FJ, Li L, et al. Double D-shaped hole opti-
cal fiber coated with graphene as a polarizer. Appl Opt.
References 2018;57(27):7659–7666.
[1] Wang JW, Liu C, Wang FM, et al. Surface plasmon reso- [9] Han HX, Hou DL, Luan NN, et al. Surface plas-
nance sensor based on coupling effects of dual photonic mon resonance sensor based on dual-side polished
1554 W. LIU ET AL.

microstructured optical fiber with dual-core. Sensors. [24] Liu M, Yang X, Shum P, et al. High-sensitivity bire-
2020;20(14):3911. fringent and single-layer coating photonic crystal fiber
[10] Gupta A, Singh H, Singh A, et al. D-Shaped photonic biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance. Appl Opt.
crystal fiber–based surface plasmon resonance biosensors 2018;57(8):1883–1886.
with spatially distributed bimetallic layers. Plasmonics. [25] Lu JJ, Li Y, Han YH, et al. D-shaped photonic crystal fiber
2020;15:1323–1330. plasmonic refractive index sensor based on gold grating.
[11] De M, Markides C, Singh VK, et al. Analysis of a sin- Appl Opt. 2018;57(19):5268.
gle solid core flat fiber plasmonic refractive index sensor. [26] Revathi AA, Rajeswari D. Surface plasmon resonance
Plasmonics. 2020;15:1429–1437. biosensor-based dual-core photonic crystal fiber: design
[12] Wang XX, Zhu JK, Tong H, et al. A theoretical study and analysis. J Opt. 2020;49(2):163–167.
of a plasmonic sensor comprising a gold nano-disk [27] Zhang SH, Li JS, Li SG. Design and numerical analysis of
array on gold film with an SiO2 spacer. Chin Phys B. a novel dual-polarized refractive index sensor based on
2019;28(4):188–193. D-shaped photonic crystal fiber. Metrologia. 2018;55(6):
[13] Liu C, Wang JW, Jin X, et al. Near-infrared surface plas- 757.
mon resonance sensor based on photonic crystal fiber [28] Salman MH, Muhammad HK, Yasser HA. Effects of
with Big Open Rings. Optik (Stuttg). 2020;207:164466. holes radius on plasmonic photonic crystal fiber sen-
[14] Yasli A, Ademgil H. Geometrical comparison of photonic sor with internal gold layer. Period Eng Nat Sci.
crystal fiber-based surface plasmon resonance sensors. 2020;8(3):1288–1296.
Opt Eng. 2018;57(3):30801. [29] Singh S, Prajapati YK. Highly sensitive refractive index
[15] Yang XC, Lu Y, Liu BL, et al. Design of a tun- sensor based on D-shaped PCF with gold-graphene lay-
able single-polarization photonic crystal fiber filter with ers on the polished surface. Appl Phys A. 2019;125(6):
silver-coated and liquid-filled air holes. IEEE Photon. 1–7.
2017;9(4):7105108. [30] Singh S, Prajapati YK. Dual-polarized ultrahigh sensi-
[16] Liu YD, Jing XL, Li SG, et al. High sensitivity surface tive gold/MoS2 graphene based D-shaped PCF refractive
plasmon resonance sensor based on d-shaped photonic index sensor in visible to near-IR region. Opt Quantum
crystal fiber with circular layout. Opt Fiber Technol. Electron. 2020;52(17):1–15.
2018;46:311–317. [31] Liu C, Wang JW, Wang FM, et al. Surface plasmon res-
[17] Rifat AA, Mahdiraji GA, Ahmed R, et al. Copper- onance (SPR) infrared sensor based on D-shape pho-
graphene-based photonic crystal fiber plasmonic biosen- tonic crystal fibers with ITO coatings. Opt Commun.
sor. IEEE Photonics J. 2017;8(1):1–8. 2020;464:125496.
[18] Huang TY. Highly sensitive SPR sensor based on [32] Melwin G, Senthilnathan K. High sensitive D-shaped
D-shaped photonic crystal fiber coated with Indium photonic crystal fiber sensor with V-groove analyte chan-
Tin oxide at near-infrared wavelength. Plasmonics. nel. Optik (Stuttg). 2020;213:164779.
2016;12(3):1–6. [33] Mahfuz MA, Hossain MA, Haque E, et al. Dual-core
[19] Han HX, Hou DL, Zhao L, et al. A large detection-range photonic crystal fiber-based plasmonic RI sensor in
plasmonic sensor based on An H-shaped photonic crystal the visible to near-IR operating band. IEEE Sens J.
fiber. Sensors. 2020;20(4):1009. 2020;20(14):7692–7700.
[20] Li CG, Yan B, Liu JJ. Refractive index sensing character- [34] Tong K, Wang FC, Wang MT, et al. Three-core photonic
istics in a D-shaped photonic quasi-crystal fiber sensor crystal fiber surface plasmon resonance sensor. Opt Fiber
based on surface plasmon resonance. J Opt Soc Am A. Technol. 2018;46:306–310.
2019;36(10):1663. [35] Rifat AA, Hasan MR, Ahmed R, et al. Photonic crys-
[21] Zhou X, Cheng TL, Li SG, et al. Practical sensing approach tal fiber-based plasmonic biosensor with external sensing
based on surface plasmon resonance in a photonic crystal approach. J Nanophotonics. 2017;12(1):012503.
fiber. OSA Continuum. 2018;1(4):1332–1340. [36] Momota MR, Hasan MR. Hollow-core silver coated
[22] Liu Q, Sun JD, Sun YD, et al. Surface plasmon resonance photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensor. Opt Mater.
sensor based on photonic crystal fiber with Indium Tin 2018;76:287–294.
Oxide film. Opt Mater. 2020;120:109800. [37] Jiao SX, Gu SF, Yang HR, et al. Highly sensitive dual-core
[23] Shafkat A. Analysis of a gold coated plasmonic sen- photonic crystal fiber based on a surface plasmon reso-
sor based on a duplex core photonic crystal fiber. Sens nance sensor with a silver nano-continuous grating. Appl
Biosensing Res. 2020;28:100324. Opt. 2018;57(28):8350–8358.