Two-Channel SPR Sensor Combined Application of Polymer- and Vitreous-Clad Optic Fibers

Abstract

By combining a polymer-clad optic fiber and a vitreous-clad optic fiber, we proposed and fabricated a novel optic fiber surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor to conduct two-channel sensing at the same detection area. The traditional optic fiber SPR sensor has many disadvantages; for example, removing the cladding requires corrosion, operating it is dangerous, adjusting the dynamic response range is hard, and producing different resonance wavelengths in the sensing area to realize a multi-channel measurement is difficult. Therefore, in this paper, we skillfully used bare fiber grinding technology and reverse symmetry welding technology to remove the cladding in a multi-mode fiber and expose the evanescent field. On the basis of investigating the effect of the grinding angle on the dynamic range change of the SPR resonance valley wavelength and sensitivity, we combined polymer-clad fiber and vitreous-clad fiber by a smart design structure to realize at a single point a two-channel measurement fiber SPR sensor. In this paper, we obtained a beautiful spectral curve from a multi-mode fiber two-channel SPR sensor. In the detection range of the refractive rate between 1.333 RIU and 1.385 RIU, the resonance valley wavelength of channel Ⅰ shifted from 622 nm to 724 nm with a mean average sensitivity of 1961 nm/RIU and the resonance valley wavelength of channel Ⅱ shifted from 741 nm to 976 nm with a mean average sensitivity of 4519 nm/RIU