Design of Plasmonic Photonic Crystal Fiber for Highly Sensitive Magnetic Field and Temperature Simultaneous Measurement

Abstract

A high-sensitivity plasmonic photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensor is designed and a metal thin film is embedded for achieving surface plasmon resonance (SPR), which can detect the magnetic field and temperature simultaneously. Within the plasmonic PCF sensor, the SPR sensing is accomplished by coating both the upper sensing channel (Ch1) and the lower sensing channel (Ch2) with gold film. In addition, the temperature-sensitive medium polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is chosen to fill in Ch1, allowing the sensor to respond to the temperature. The magnetic field-sensitive medium magnetic fluid (MF) is chosen to fill in Ch2, allowing this sensor to respond to the magnetic field. During these processes, this proposed SPR-PCF sensor can achieve dual-parameter sensing. The paper also investigates the electrical field characteristics, structural parameters and sensing performance using COMSOL. Finally, under the magnetic field range of 50–130 Oe, this sensor has magnetic field sensing sensitivities of 0 pm/Oe (Ch1) and 235 pm/Oe (Ch2). In addition, this paper also investigates the response of temperature. Under the temperature range of 20–40 °C, Ch1 and Ch2 have temperature sensitivities of −2000 pm/°C and 0 pm/°C, respectively. It is noteworthy that the two sensing channels respond to only a single physical parameter; this sensing performance is not common in dual-parameter sensing. Due to this sensing performance, it can be found that the magnetic field and temperature can be detected by this designed SPR-PCF sensor simultaneously without founding and calculating a sensing matrix. This sensing performance can solve the cross-sensitivity problem of magnetic field and temperature, thus reducing the measurement error. Since it can sense without a matrix, it further can solve the ill-conditioned matrix and nonlinear change in sensitivity problems in dual-parameter sensing. These excellent sensing capabilities are very important for carrying out multiparameter sensing in complicated environments.