Design and Optimization of High-Performance Surface Plasmon Resonance Based Photonic Crystal Fiber Biosensor for Enhanced Detection and Diverse Applications

Abstract

Over the years, various designs for traditional photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) and surface plasmon resonance photonic crystal fibers (SPR-PCFs) have been proposed, each demonstrating different structures, sensitivities, and confinement losses. Building on a comprehensive review of previous studies, we present a photonic crystal fiber biosensor based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) with outstanding performance characteristics, designed using COMSOL Multiphysics 6.1. In this study, we developed a sensor incorporating air holes of varying diameters, strategically positioned to optimize performance. By meticulously fine-tuning all fiber parameters, we achieved a maximum amplitude sensitivity (AS) of 965.976 RIU−1 and a wavelength sensitivity (WS) of 134,000 nm/RIU, with a maximum sensor resolution of 4 × 10−4 RIU for the x-polarization. For the y-polarization, we attained a maximum amplitude sensitivity (AS) of 1167.53 RIU−1 and a wavelength sensitivity (WS) of 125,000 nm/RIU, with a maximum sensor resolution of 5 × 10−4 RIU. Additionally, the sensor achieved a maximum figure of merit (FOM) of 832.422 for the x-polarization and 1246.986 for the y-polarizatio. The maximum birefringence observed was 1.980 × 10−3. The overall analyte sensing range is from refractive indices 1.35 to 1.42, and the sensor has a fabrication tolerance limit of ±5%. With its enhanced performance in terms of sensitivity, we believe that this SPR-based PCF biosensor can potentially contribute to the detection of unknown analytes and play a significant role in medical diagnostics.