Hydrogen gas sensor based on long-range surface plasmons in lossy palladium film placed on photonic crystal stack

•Hydrogen gas sensor has been fabricated by Pd thin film on a photonic crystal.•The change in the refractive index has been used to sense the gas concentration.•The ability of gas sensor has been examined by long range surface plasmon resonance.

Nanostructured plasmonic H2 gas sensor has been designed and fabricated by palladium nanostructure onto one-dimensional photonic crystal. Our one dimensional photonic crystal has been designed and fabricated to have photonic band gap in visible spectrum and the palladium nanostructure has been designed and constructed as 11 nm thin film onto the above mentioned photonic crystal. All of fabrication processes have been done in vacuum chamber by the aid of electron gun and sputtering deposition methods. The ability of the devise as a Hydrogen gas sensor has been examined by recording the long range surface Plasmon resonance in different injection of H2 gas and our results show that this sensor head can be used to sense very little amount of H2 gas in ambient at room temperature. A reversible red shift of the reflectance deep of long range surface Plasmon resonance make this sensor as a good and useful device in medical, safety and energy related materials.