Study the Effect of Gold Film Thickness on the Sensitivity of the U Shape Fiber Sensor by the Occurrence of LSPR Phenomenon.

In this paper, a U-shaped probe with a curvature diameter of half a centimeter was implemented using plastic optical fibers. A layer of the outer shell of the fibers was removed by polishing to a D-section. The sensor was tested by immersing it in a sodium chloride solution with variable refractive index depending on solution concentrations ranging from 1.333 to 1.363. In this design, the sensor experienced a decrease in its intensity as the concentration of the solution increased. The next step The sensor was coated with a thin layer of gold with a thickness of 20 nm, and the sensor was tested with the same solutions which resulted in a shift in wavelengths where the shift in wavelength was 5.37 nm and sensitivity 179 nm / RIU. To study the effect of the thickness of the film, it was coated with a second layer of gold to make the total thickness 30 nm. The results showed an improvement in the sensitivity with increasing the thickness of the coating, to become 466.66 nm / RIU and the wavelength shift was 14 nm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]