Design and analysis of surface plasmon resonance sensor based on high-birefringent microstructured optical fiber

Optical fiber based surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors are favored by their high sensitivity, compactness, remote and in situ sensing capabilities. Microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) possess microfluidic channels extended along the entire length right next to the fiber core, thereby enabling the infiltrated biochemical analyte to access the evanescent field of guided light. Since SPR can only be excited by the polarization vertical to metal surface, external perturbation could induce the polarization crosstalk in fiber core, thus leading to the instability of sensor output. Therefore for the first time we analyze how the large birefringence suppresses the impact of polarization crosstalk. We propose a high-birefringent MOF based SPR sensor with birefringence larger than 4 × 10 −4 as well as easy infiltration of microfluidic analyte, while maintaining sensitivity as high as 3100 nm/RIU.