AZO-coated plasmonic PCF nanosensor for blood constituent detection in near-infrared and visible spectrum

We propose an elementary circular-shaped plasmonic biosensor based on photonic crystal fiber for multiple blood component identification in near-infrared and visible spectrum. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper where plasmonic biosensor is proposed to determine blood components for near-infrared and visible spectrum region using comparative amplitude sensitivity (AS) as the sensitivity parameter. Here we consider Al-doped ZnO as plasmonic material to attain improved sensor performance and extensible design. The finite element method is adopted throughout the numerical study. Observations made using optimum parameters have led to investigations regarding resonance quality, sensitivity, sensor resolution, sensor length and figure of merit (FOM). Numerical results show that the proposed structure exhibits higher amplitude sensitivity of 5078.99 RIU-1, maximum resolution of 5.13 x 10(-5) and an overall excellent FOM trait of 325 in the HE11y mode. For HE11x mode, the corresponding values are 2576.38 RIU-1, 5.71 x 10(-5), 250, respectively. Possible fabrication technique using stack-and-draw method and tolerance analysis of designed sensor are also examined. Since considerable attention has not been given yet in blood component detection by using PCF-SPR sensing, this design will pave a whole new path in the medical biosensing arena.