Theoretical study of nanocomposites based fiber optic SPR sensor

A surface plasmon resonance based fiber optic sensor with nanocomposite layer coated on the core of the optical fiber has been theoretically studied. Nanocomposites consisting of Au, Ag and Cu nanoparticles with their varying volume fractions embedded in host dielectric matrices of TiO2 and InN are considered. The sensitivity of the sensor has been found to increase with increase in both thickness of nanocomposites and volume fraction of metal nanoparticles. Further, for a fixed nanocomposite thickness and fixed volume fraction of metal nanoparticles, the sensitivity of sensor is higher for Au nanoparticles based nanocomposites than that of Ag and Cu nanoparticles. The proposed SPR sensor based on 70 nm thick Au-InN nanocomposite with volume fraction of 0.85 demonstrates the highest sensitivity of 2875 nm/RIU.