Gold-coated photonic crystal fiber biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance: Design and analysis

The particularly sensitive circular lattice Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) based Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) sensor is proposed to gain high sensitivity for the detection of unknown analytes. In this model, two-layer PCF based on the SPR has been designed. A plasmonic chemically inactive material gold (Au) with thickness 35 nm is used to the outside of the PCF structure which exhibits negative real permittivity. A circular perfectly match layer (PML) outside the structure is applied to evaluate the performance of the sensor. The raised design has consisted of symmetric air-hole. Three small air-holes are used in second layer and center which help us to produce more evanescent field. Using the wavelength interrogation method the proposed model shows the maximum wavelength sensitivity of 9000 nm/RIU (Refractive Index Unit) and using the amplitude interrogation method it shows the maximum amplitude sensitivity of 318 RIU−1 with maximum sensor resolution 1.11 × 10−5 in the sensing range among analyte 1.34-1.37. Here the proposed model is investigated how phase matching points are varied with changing parameters as like diameter, PML, thickness of gold (Au), sensing layer and pitch. The obtained result reveals that the proposed model may be used in biochemical and biological analyte detection to find out the important application.