Modification of Inner Surface of Photonic Crystal Fibers with Self-Assembled Polyaniline Films

Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) with a hollow core are one of the most promising solid support of fiber-optic sensors. The main advantages of PCF as sensor elements in clinical analysis are minimization of optical interactions from the sample and the ability to analyze small volume of samples. At the same time, low sorption capacity of glass which is the basic material for the fabrication of the PCF, limits their use in the development of biosensors. Modification of the inner surface of the PCF can be the solution of the problem. In this work the synthesis of self-assembled films of polyaniline (PANI) on the inner surface of the PCFs was carried out. The modified PCFs were studied by spectroscopy and electron microscopy. It was found that the covering of the inner surface of the PCFs with PANI leads to a shift of the local maximums of the transmission spectrum PCFs up to 25 nm. These makes possible to design the method of varying of photonic bandgaps location.