A Photonic Crystal Fiber for Chemical Sensing Applications

This article reports a unique chemical sensor utilizing photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The proposed structure of PCF is designed with a hexagonal lattice which makes it a promising aspect for fabrication using the stack-and-draw process. The analysis of the modes confined in the core are obtained through standard FEM (finite element method) technique. The sensitivity of the structure was calculated through simulation results which proves the technical stability of the design. The presented PCF reported a unique deployment of ethyl alcohol (C
2
H
5
OH) as a sensing material in the proposed PCF based chemical sensor. The device reports an effective variation of relative sensitivity in the range of 1.6% to 2.5% in the wavelength range of 400 nm to 2000 nm. This device can be further integrated in other complex photonic integrated circuits for industrial and medical applications