Hybrid Si-Au plasmonic sensor on the end-facet of a dual-core optical fiber enhanced by hotspots: a theoretical study

Abstract

We propose an efficient hybrid Si-Au sensor on the end-facet of a dual-core single-mode optical fiber. The design incorporates slanted Si grating couplers on the two cores, interconnected by a plasmonic waveguide bearing subwavelength corrugations. The corrugations enhance the surface sensitivity by creating regions of strongly enhanced fields - plasmonic hotspots. Unlike conventional Si waveguide grating couplers, we employ slanted slits for unidirectional coupling/decoupling between TM-polarized core light and surface plasmon polaritons. Our structure results in about 3% core-to-core (TM-to-TM) coupling efficiency, while also providing high bulk and surface sensitivities of about 1000 nm/RIU and 1.66 nm/nm, respectively. The sensor can be interrogated remotely in a transmission arrangement. The sensing medium can be probed by dipping the fiber tip directly therein. Potential applications include remote sensing, brain studies, or in-vivo biosensing.