Quasi-D-Shaped Fiber Optic Plasmonic Biosensor for High-Index Analyte Detection

In this paper, we propose a highly sensitive quasi-D-shaped fiber optic biosensor for detection of high refractive index (RI) liquid analytes via surface plasmon resonance. The main mechanism of sensing is interplay between photonic crystal fiber fundamental mode and plasmonic mode which leads to formation of different resonance peaks depending on the analyte RI. We numerically analyze the structure sensitivity to design parameters and demonstrate the sensing performance of the proposed biosensor using both spectral sensitivity and amplitude sensitivity methods. The proposed biosensor has a RI detection range of 0.15 refractive index unit (RIU) from 1.45 to 1.6. The sensor exhibits linear sensing performance with a RI spectral sensitivity of 9300 nm/RIU for analyte RI ranging from 1.45 to 1.525, 1176 nm/RIU for analyte RI ranging from 1.525 to 1.6 and in particular, 11800 nm/RIU for analyte RI between 1.475 and 1.5. Furthermore, an average RI sensitivity of 4800 nm/RIU for analyte RI ranging from 1.45 to 1.6 is demonstrated. We also study the amplitude sensitivities of the proposed sensor which show promising maximum values of 183.6 RIU-1 for 785 nm excitation and 820 RIU-1 for 1050 nm excitation. Due to the simple structure of the proposed biosensor, large detection range, high sensitivity and promising linear sensing performance, the proposed biosensor can be a promising candidate for detecting various high RI chemical and biochemical samples.