High-sensitivity photonic crystal fiber sensor based on surface plasmon resonance

In this paper, we propose a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensor based on the surface plasmonic resonance (SPR) effect for simultaneous temperature and refractive index (RI) measurement. The coupling characteristics and sensing performance of the sensor are analyzed using the full vector finite element method (FEM). The sensor provides two channels for independent measurement of RI and temperature. When operating independently, channel I supports y-polarized light with a sensitivity of up to 7 000 nm/RIU for detecting RI, while channel II supports x-polarized light with a sensitivity of up to 16 nm/°C for detecting temperature. Additionally, we investigate the influence of gold layer thickness on the sensing performance to optimize the sensor.