DOI: 10.1002/adom.201801433 Scientific American selects plasmonic sensing as the top 10 emerging technologies of 2018.[15] Almost every single new plasmonic or photonic structure would be explored to test its sensing ability.[16–29] These works tend to report the sensing performance of their own structure. Some declare that their sensitivity breaks the world record. However, there is still a missing literature on what the world record really is, the gap between the experiments and the theoretical limit, as well as the differences between metal-based plasmonic sensors and dielectric-based photonic sensors. To push plasmonic and photonic sensors into industrial applications, an optical sensing technology map is absolutely necessary. This review aims to cover a wide range of most representative plasmonic and photonic sensors, and place them into a single map. The sensor performances of different structures will be distinctly illustrated. Future researchers could plot the sensing ability of their new sensors into this technology map and gauge their performances in this field. In this review, we focus on optical refractive index (RI) sensors with no fluorescent labeling required. We will utilize two parameters to characterize and compare the performance of optical RI sensors: sensitivity to RI change (denoted by symbol SRI) and figure of merit (in short, FoM). For simplicity, we restrict our discussions to bulk RI change, where the change in RI occurs within the whole sample. There is another case where the RI variation occurs only within a very small volume close to the sensor surface. This surface RI sensitivity is proportional to the bulk RI sensitivity, the ratio of the thickness of the layer within which the surface RI variation occurs, and the penetration depth of the optical mode.[6] The bulk RI sensitivity defines the ratio of the change in sensor output (e.g., resonance angle, intensity, or resonant wavelength) to the bulk RI variations. Here, we limit our discussions to the spectral interrogations and the bulk RI sensitivity SRI is given by[3,5–7,30]

Optical Refractive Index Sensors with Plasmonic and Photonic Structures: Promising and Inconvenient Truth

A surface plasmon resonance-based fiber-optic sensor for simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature of liquid samples is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensor consists of a gold-coated MM-SM-MM optical fiber structure, whose sensitive section was partially covered with polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to generate two independent SPR resonance dips in the fiber transmission spectrum. One of the dips is generated by the bare gold-coated fiber section whose wavelength resonance is tuned by the refractive index and temperature of the surrounding medium. The other dip that is exclusively used to monitor the temperature variations of the liquid sample, whose central wavelength at 900 nm corresponds to PDMS refractive index at 20 °C, is produced by the polymerized gold-coated fiber section. The high refractive index and temperature sensitivity achieved, 2323.4 nm/RIU and −2.850 nm/°C respectively, the small size, the ease fabrication process, and the bio-compatibility of the proposed device are appealing characteristics that makes it ideal for practical bio-sensing applications.

Simultaneous measurement of refractive index and temperature using a SPR-based fiber optic sensor

We demonstrate a sub-micron silica diaphragm-based fiber-tip Fabry–Perot interferometer for pressure sensing applications. The thinnest silica diaphragm, with a thickness of ∼320  nm, has been achieved by use of an improved electrical arc discharge technique. Such a sub-micron silica diaphragm breaks the sensitivity limitation imposed by traditional all-silica Fabry–Perot interferometric pressure sensors and, as a result, a high pressure sensitivity of ∼1036  pm/MPa at 1550 nm and a low temperature cross-sensitivity of ∼960  Pa/°C are achieved when a silica diaphragm of ∼500  nm in thickness is used. Moreover, the all-silica spherical structure enhanced the mechanical strength of the micro-cavity sensor, making it suitable for high sensitivity pressure sensing in harsh environments.

Sub-micron silica diaphragm-based fiber-tip Fabry-Perot interferometer for pressure measurement.

We demonstrated a high-sensitivity strain sensor based on an in-fiber Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) with an air cavity, which was created by splicing together two sections of standard single-mode fibers. The sensitivity of this strain sensor was enhanced to 6.0  pm/μe by improving the cavity length of the FPI by means of repeating arc discharges for reshaping the air cavity. Moreover, such a strain sensor has a very low temperature sensitivity of 1.1  pm/°C, which reduces the cross sensitivity between tensile strain and temperature.

High-sensitivity strain sensor based on in-fiber improved Fabry–Perot interferometer

a b s t r a c t We demonstrated a refractive index (RI) sensor based on optical fiber Michelson interferometer (MI), which was fabricated by splicing a section of thin core fiber (TCF) to a standard single mode fiber with a core offset. Experimentally, such a MI-based RI sensor with a core offset of 8 m and a TCF length of 3 mm exhibits a high resolution of 4.9 × 10−6 RIU and sensitivity of −202.46 dB/RIU, which is two or three times higher than that of intensity-modulated RI sensors reported previously. In contrast, our MIbased RI sensor is insensitive to temperature, thus overcoming the cross-sensitivity problem between surrounding RI and temperature. Moreover, intensity modulation, rather than wavelength modulation, was used in the proposed MI-based RI sensor, and the sensor also has the advantages of compact size (8 mm), simple structure, easy fabrication, and good repeatability. © 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Intensity modulated refractive index sensor based on optical fiber Michelson interferometer

We demonstrated a novel fiber in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with a large fringe visibility of up to 17 dB, which was fabricated by misaligned splicing a short section of thin core fiber between two sections of standard single-mode fiber. Such a MZI could be used to realize simultaneous measurement of tensile strain and temperature. Tensile strain was measured with an ultrahigh sensitivity of −0.023 dB/μɛ via the intensity modulation of interference fringes, and temperature was measured with a high sensitivity of 51 pm/°C via the wavelength modulation of interference fringe. That is, the MZI-based sensor overcomes the cross-sensitivity problem between tensile strain and temperature by means of different demodulation methods. Moreover, this proposed sensor exhibits the advantages of low-cost, extremely simple structure, compact size (only about 10 mm), and good repeatability.

Simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature by employing fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer

A novel intensity-modulated refractive index sensor based on an in-fiber Michelson interferometer is demonstrated by splicing a section of thin core fiber between two standard single mode fibers. Such a refractive index sensor exhibits an ultrahigh sensitivity of −208.24 and 125.44 dB/RIU at the refractive index of 1.440 and 1.500, respectively. The refractive index sensor is insensitive to temperature and thus solves the cross-sensitivity problem between temperature and surrounding refractive index. Moreover, the promising RI sensor has the advantages of short size (less than 2 mm) and easy fabrication.

Temperature-insensitive refractive index sensor based on in-fiber Michelson interferometer

We demonstrated an inflated long period fiber grating (I-LPFG) inscribed in a pure-silica photonic crystal fiber (PCF) for high-sensitivity gas pressure sensing applications. The I-LPFG was inscribed by use of the pressure-assisted CO2 laser beam-scanning technique to inflate periodically air holes of a PCF along the fiber axis. Such an I-LPFG with periodic inflations exhibits a very high gas pressure sensitivity of 1.68 nm/MPa, which is one order of magnitude higher than that, i.e., 0.12 nm/Mpa, of the LPFG without periodic inflations. Moreover, the I-LPFG has a very low temperature sensitivity of 3.1 pm/°C due to the pure silica material in the PCF so that the pressure measurement error, resulting from the cross-sensitivity between temperature and gas pressure, is less than 1.8 Kpa/°C in the case of no temperature compensation. So the I-LPFG could be used to develop a promising gas pressure sensor, and the achieved pressure measurement range is up to 10 MPa.

Xiaoyong Zhong

Papers

High-sensitivity strain sensor based on in-fiber improved Fabry–Perot interferometer

Intensity modulated refractive index sensor based on optical fiber Michelson interferometer

Simultaneous measurement of strain and temperature by employing fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Temperature-insensitive refractive index sensor based on in-fiber Michelson interferometer

Temperature-insensitivity gas pressure sensor based on inflated long period fiber grating inscribed in photonic crystal fiber.