Evanescent wave absorption sensor based on tapered multimode fiber coated with monolayer graphene film

An evanescent wave absorption (EWA) sensor based on tapered multimode fiber (TMMF) coated with monolayer graphene film for the detection of double-stranded DNA (DS-DNA) is investigated in this work. The TMMF is a silica multimode fiber (nominally at 62.5 μm), which was tapered to symmetric taper with waist diameters of ~30 μm and total length of ~3 mm. Monolayer graphene film was grown on a copper foil via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) technology and transferred onto skinless tapered fiber core via dry transfer technology. All the components of the sensor are coupled together by fusion splicer in order to eliminate the external disturbance. DS-DNA is created by the assembly of two relatively complemented oligonucleotides. The measurements are obtained by using a spectrometer in the optical wavelength range of 400-900 nm. With the increase of DS-DNA concentration, the output light intensity (OPLI) arisen an obvious attenuation. Importantly, the absorbance (A) and the DS-DNA concentrations shown a reasonable linear variation in a wide range of 5-400 μM. Through a series of comparison, the accuracy of TMMF sensor with graphene (G-TMMF) is much better than that without graphene (TMMF), which can be attributed to the molecular enrichment of graphene by π-π stacking.