An Optical Fiber Refractive Index Sensor Based on the Hybrid Mode of Tamm and Surface Plasmon Polaritons

A novel high performance optical fiber refractive index (RI) sensor based on the hybrid transverse magnetic (TM) mode of Tamm plasmon polariton (TPP) and surface plasmon polariton (SPP) is proposed. The structure of the sensor is a multi-mode optical fiber with a one dimensional photonic crystal (1 DPC)/metal multi-films outer coated on its fiber core. A simulation study of the proposed sensor is carried out with the geometrical optical model to investigate the performance of the designed sensor with respect to the center wavelength, bilayer period and the thickness of silver layer. Because the lights transmitted in the fiber sensor have much larger incident angles than those in the prism based sensors, the center wavelength of the 1 DPC should shift to longer wavelength. When the coupling between TM-TPP and SPP is stronger, the sensor exhibits better performance because the electromagnetic field of the TPP-SPP hybrid mode is enhanced more in the analyte. Compared to most conventional fiber surface plasmon resonance sensors, the figure of merit of the proposed sensor is much higher while the sensitivity is comparable. The idea of utilizing TPP-SPP hybrid mode for RI sensing in the solid-core optical fiber structure presented in this paper could contribute to the study of the fiber RI sensor based on TPP.