Design and Analysis of Surface-Plasmon-Resonance-Based Photonic Quasi-Crystal Fiber Biosensor for High-Refractive-Index Liquid Analytes

Abstract

We propose a six-fold photonic quasi-crystal fibre with a trapezoidal analyte channel based on surface plasmon resonance for the detection of high refractive index liquid analytes and numerically analyse its sensing performance for different liquid analyte refractive indices and heights using the finite element method. In contrast to the common D-shaped structure photonic crystal fibre, we design a trapezoidal analyte channel to investigate the role of the sample liquid height within the channel and discussed the feasibility of the fabrication process. We find that with various liquid analyte heights ratio of 20%, 25%, 30% and 50% of the maximum channel height, the proposed biosensor exhibits linear sensing performance with a maximum refractive index (RI) sensitivity of 4400 nm/RIU, 6100 nm/RIU, 8000 nm/RIU and 17000 nm/RIU respectively, for analytes RI range of 1.44 to 1.57, 1.41 to 1.51, 1.40 to 1.49 and 1.40 to 1.44. This sensor is suitable to detect various high RI chemicals, biochemicals and organic chemical samples. Owing to its simple structure of the proposed biosensor with promising linear sensing performance, we envisage that this biosensor could turn out to be a versatile and competitive instrument for the detection of high refractive index liquid analytes.

Influence of the Sub-Peak of Secondary Surface Plasmon Resonance Onto the Sensing Performance of a D-Shaped Photonic Crystal Fibre Sensor

“…12(e), it should be noted that the corresponding FOM of the sensor will be degraded sharply as the FWHM bandwidth is broadened due to the the secondary resonance at the longer wavelength. The average FOM obtained for analyte's binding thickness of 500 nm and 1500 nm are respectively calculated to be 88.6 /RIU and 93.7 /RIU and these values are higher than the FOM reported in [11].…”

“…There are different types of analytes that can be detected using the proposed sensor as long as the surface plasmon mode is created for the sensing range of refractive indices (1.33 to 1.41) of the samples that are of interest, such as water (1.33), glucose solution in water (1.34 to 1.36, depending on the concentration percentage) or ethyl alcohol (1.36). The PCF-SPR sensors now are also widely used as bio-sensors for detecting and monitoring the aqueous based immobilise biomolecules in antigen-antibody interaction binding process [11]. The local refractive index of analyte binding-layer changes as the analytes selectively bind to the functionalized surface [35].…”

“…Apart from the inherent advantages as a kind of optical fibres, PCFs exhibit their own pros, especially the ability to control its optical characteristics by manipulating the structural parameters of the optical fibre [10]. The PCF-SPR based sensors are now widely studied because of their simple and compact probe designed for high sensitivity, robustness, cost effectiveness, fast response, label-free detection [11]. Moreover, it is possible to enhance the sensitivity and the sensing range by optimizing the structural parameters, namely, air holes diameters and the distance between two adjacent air holes.…”

Overview of Recent Advances in the Design of Plasmonic Fiber-Optic Biosensors

“…While the detection range of this biosensor was more limited comparing to [37], the main advantages of this biosensor were utilizing a cost-effective material (titanium nitride) instead of gold, and also showing a higher sensitivity and figure of merit comparing to gold-based D-shaped PCF biosensors. As PCF is an extremely flexible platform for realizing different design concepts, a major diversity in terms of the possible designs for plasmonic biosensors based on PCFs can be seen in the literature [42][43][44]. In contrast to the common D-shaped and H-Shaped PCFs, in 2019, Chu et al [42] proposed…”

Recent Advances in Plasmonic Sensor-Based Fiber Optic Probes for Biological Applications

“…Figure of merit (FOM) is one of the important parameters related to the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to evaluate the FOPS sensing performance by introducing the spectral width [51]. It can be given by the equation of FOM = S/FWHM, where S is the wavelength interrogation sensitivity and FWHM represents the full width at half-maximum of the spectra [52].…”