Refractive Index Sensor Based on Metal-Clad Planar Polymer Waveguide Operating at 850 nm

• Main Authors: Lanting Ji, Wei Wei, Gang Li, Shuqing Yang, Yujie Fu, Juan Su, Chi Wu
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2020-09-01
• Series: Photonic Sensors
• Subjects: Metal-clad optical waveguide sensor; intensity interrogation; refractive index of liquid
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13320-020-0606-1

Abstract A metal-clad planar polymer waveguide refractive index sensor based on epoxy (EPO) polymer materials by using light intensity interrogation at 850 nm is designed. The polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) material is deployed as the low refractive index (RI) buffer layer in order to better couple the optical guided mode and the surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) mode for working in water environment. The effects of the gold film thickness, PMMA buffer layer thickness, waveguide layer thickness, waveguide width, and gold length on the sensor sensing characteristics have been comprehensively studied. Simulation results demonstrate that the normalized transmission increases quasi-linearly with the increment of RI of the analyte from 1.33 to 1.46. The sensitivity is 491.5 dB/RIU, corresponding to a high RI resolution of 2.6×10−9 RIU. The designed SPP-based optical waveguide sensor is low-cost, wide-range, and high-precision, and has a broad application prospect in biochemical sensing with merits of miniaturization, flexibility, and multiplexing.