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

High Refractive Index Diphenyl Sulfide Photopolymers for Solar Cell Antireflection Coatings

The anti-reflection film can effectively reduce the surface reflectivity of solar photovoltaics, increase the transmittance of light, and improve the photoelectric conversion efficiency. The high refractive index coating is an important part of the anti-reflection film. However, the traditional metal oxide coating has poor stability and complicated processes. To address this issue, we prepared two organic high refractive index (HRI) photopolymers by modifying epoxy acrylic acid with 4,4′-thiodibenzenethiol, which can be surface patterned by nanoimprinting to prepare antireflection coatings. As a result, two modified photopolymers with high refractive index (n > 1.63), high optical transmittance (T > 95%), and thermal stability (Tg > 100 °C) are obtained after curing. In particular, the diphenyl sulfide photopolymer modified by ethyl isocyanate acrylate has a refractive index up to 1.667 cured by UV light. Our work confirms that the organic HRI photopolymer can be obtained by introducing high molar refractive index groups, with potential to be applied as a PV cell power conversion efficiency material.

High sensitivity fiber cladding SPR strain sensor based on V-groove structure

How to couple the light in the fiber core to the cladding is an urgent issue that need to be done for the fabrication of the fiber-cladding SPR sensor, and there is no report about the fiber SPR strain sensor. Hereby, we propose and demonstrate a high sensitivity fiber cladding SPR strain sensor based on V-groove structure. By CO₂ laser, the V-groove is fabricated on the single-mode fiber, and the light in the fiber core is effectively coupled to the cladding. The cladding 2cm behind the V-groove is coated with sensing gold film, and a multimode fiber is spliced with the sensing probe to construct the novel fiber cladding SPR sensor. On the basis of the investigation of the effects of different V-groove depth, number and period on the performance of fiber SPR refractive index sensor, a high sensitivity strain SPR sensor is designed and fabricated by employing the characteristic that the V-groove will deform with strain. The testing results indicate that the average refractive index sensitivity of the sensor is 2896.4nm/RIU, and the strain wavelength sensitivity is 25.92pm/µε which is much higher than that of the fiber interference and grating strain sensors, and the strain light intensity sensitivity is -4.4×10^-4 a.u./µε. The proposed fiber cladding SPR strain sensor has the advantages of simple structure and convenient manufacture, and can be used for working in a narrow space.

A plug-and-play optical fiber SPR sensor for simultaneous measurement of glucose and cholesterol concentrations

A plug-and-play surface plasmon resonance (SPR) dual-parameter optical fiber biosensor is reported, in which Au film was firstly coated on the fiber surface for exciting SPR and the end half of the Au film was modified with Au nanoparticles to generate double SPR resonance valleys. For simultaneous detecting of glucose and cholesterol concentrations, modified P-mercaptophenylboronic acid (PMBA) and β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) were subsequently coated on the surface of sensor probe. Due to the cis-diol structure of glucose, it can interact with PMBA, leading to a red shift of one SPR resonant valley, whose maximum wavelength shift is 11.228 nm in the range of 0-1.7 mM glucose concentration. On the same time, the cholesterol molecules can realize the host-guest combination with β-CD, leading to a red shift of another SPR resonant valley, and the maximum wavelength shift is 18.893 nm in the cholesterol concentration range of 0-300 nM. The detection limits of the sensor to glucose and cholesterol are 0.00078 mM and 0.012 nM, respectively. The enhances the practical value of the dual-parameter sensor. Both theory and experiment results verify the feasibility of the "plug-and-play" sensor to measure the dual biomass of glucose and cholesterol with ultra-low detection limit and good selectivity. The proposed method provides a huge research value for the optical fiber sensor in multi-parameter measurement.

Fiber SPR refractive index sensor with the variable core refractive index

In this paper, a refractive index sensor based on the control of the fiber core refractive index is proposed. By employing ultraviolet curable adhesive with the different refractive index and hollow capillary fiber, the special fiber with a variable core refractive index is fabricated. Using the special fiber, a novel, to the best of our knowledge, refractive index surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor with a controllable detecting range of refractive index is realized. Functional testing of the sensing probes with the core refractive indices of 1.590, 1.516, and 1.454 is performed respectively, indicating that their sensitivities are 1580 nm/RIU, 2220 nm/RIU, and 3467 nm/RIU, respectively, and their detecting ranges of refractive index are 1.385-1.435 RIU, 1.365-1.415 RIU, and 1.335-1.385 RIU, respectively. Furthermore, in order to explore the detection effect of the sensing probe with the higher-core refractive index, we conducted theoretical calculation using the Kretchmann model. The experimental and simulating results indicates that, with the increase of the core refractive index, the magnitude of refractive index that can be detected increases. This study provides a new method for the detection of high refractive index solutions and a new idea for the fabrication of wavelength-division multiplexing distributed SPR sensors.

Optical Fiber Cladding SPR Sensor Based on Core-Shift Welding Technology

The typical structure of an optical fiber surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor, which has been widely investigated, is to produce the SPR phenomenon by the transmission of light in a fiber core. The traditional method is to peel off the fiber cladding by complex methods such as corrosion, polishing, and grinding. In this paper, the transmitted light of a single-mode fiber is injected into three kinds of fiber cladding by core-shift welding technology to obtain the evanescent field directly between the cladding and the air interface and to build the Kretschmann structure by plating with a 50-nm gold film. The SPR sensing phenomenon is realized in three kinds of fiber cladding of a single-mode fiber, a graded-index multimode fiber, and a step-index multimode fiber. For the step-index multimode fiber cladding SPR sensor, all the light field energy is coupled to the cladding, leading to no light field in the fiber core, the deepest resonance valley, and the narrowest full width at half maximum. The single-mode fiber cladding SPR sensor has the highest sensitivity, and the mean sensitivity of the probe reaches 2538 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) after parameter optimization.