Vol. 41, Issue 4, pp. 941-951

Abstract

Silver nanowire filled photonic crystal fibers are proposed in this paper to achieve surface plasmon resonance sensors and overcome the complicacy and difficulty of coating the holes in the photonic crystal fiber. Optical field distributions of these fibers at different wavelengths are calculated and simulated using the finite element method (FEM), and the sensing properties are discussed in both areas of resonant wavelength and intensity detection. Numerical simulation results show that carefully designed structure of the sensor brings about an excellent effect, with both spectral and intensity sensitivity in the range of 4×10^–5–5×10^–5 RIU, better than in the case of similar structures coated with metal film, and the fabrication is expected to be simplified.