A Reconfigurable Surface-Plasmon-Based Filter/Sensor Using D-Shaped Photonic Crystal Fiber

Abstract

A reconfigurable surface-plasmon-based filter/sensor using D-shaped photonic crystal fiber is proposed. Initially a D-shaped PCF is designed and optimized to realize the highly birefringence and by ensuring the single polarization filter. A tiny layer of silver is placed on the flat surface of the D-shaped fiber with a small half-circular opening to activate the plasmon modes. By the surface plasmon effect a maximum confinement loss of about 713 dB/cm is realized at the operating wavelength of 1.98 µm in X-polarized mode. At this wavelength the proposed fiber only allows Y-polarization and filters the X-polarization using surface plasmon resonance. It is also exhibiting maximum confinement loss of about 426 dB/cm at wavelength 1.92 µm wavelength for Y-polarization. At this 1.92 µm wavelength the proposed structure attenuated the Y-polarization completely and allowed X-polarization alone. The proposed PCF polarization filter can be extended as a sensor by adding an analyte outside this filter structure. The proposed sensor can detect even a small refractive index (RI) variation of analytes ranging from 1.34–1.37. This sensor provides the maximum sensitivity of about 5000 nm/RIU; it enables this sensor to be ideally suited for various biosensing and industrial applications.