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Experimental Characterization of Plasmonic Sensors Based on Lab-Built Tapered Plastic Optical Fibers

Authors :
Nunzio Cennamo
Francesco Arcadio
Aldo Minardo
Domenico Montemurro
Luigi Zeni
Source :
Applied Sciences, Vol 10, Iss 12, p 4389 (2020)
Publication Year :
2020
Publisher :
MDPI AG, 2020.

Abstract

In this work, we have compared several configurations of surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors based on D-shaped tapered plastic optical fibers (TPOFs). Particularly, the TPOFs used to obtain the SPR sensors are made by a lab-built system based on two motorized linear positioning stages and a heating plate. Preliminarily, a comparative analysis has been carried out between two different configurations, one with and one without a thin buffer layer deposited between the core of TPOFs and the gold film. After this preliminary step, we have used the simpler configuration, obtained without the buffer layer, to realize different SPR D-shaped TPOF sensors. This study could be of interest in SPR D-shaped multimode plastic optical fiber (POF) sensors because, without the tapers, the performances decrease when the POF’s diameter decreases, whereas the performances improve in SPR D-shaped tapered POF sensors, where the diameter decreases in the D-shaped sensing area. The performances of the SPR sensors based on different taper ratios have been analyzed and compared. The SPR-TPOF sensors have been tested using water–glycerin mixtures with refractive indices ranging from 1.332 to 1.381 RIU. According to the theory, the experimental results have demonstrated that, as the taper ratio increases, the sensitivity of the SPR sensor increases as well, while on the contrary the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) decreases.

Details

Language :
English
ISSN :
20763417
Volume :
10
Issue :
12
Database :
Directory of Open Access Journals
Journal :
Applied Sciences
Publication Type :
Academic Journal
Accession number :
edsdoj.01cb73088c2a4aab929e5bff68b60470
Document Type :
article
Full Text :
https://doi.org/10.3390/app10124389