Enhancement of Surface Plasmon Fiber Sensor Sensitivity Through the Grafting of Gold Nanoparticles

The optical fibers, coated with plasmonic active metal films, represent the simple and unpretentious sensors, potentially useful for measurements of physical or chemical quantities and wide range of analytical application. All fiber-based plasmonic sensors operate on the same physical principle based on changes in the position of the plasmon absorption peak induced by a variation of surrounding medium refractive index. However, the observed spectral differences are often weak, and thus an enhancement of sensor sensitivity is strongly required. In this paper, we propose the immobilization of gold nanoparticles with sharp edges on the thin gold layer, deposited on the multimode fiber surface for improvement of the sensor functionality. The morphological and compositional changes in the gold covered fiber surface were determined by using the atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy methods. As a result of gold nanoparticles immobilization, the pronounced plasmon energy concentration near the fiber surface occurred, thus enhancing the response of the proposed hybrid plasmonic system to the variation of ambient refractive index. The position of plasmon absorption in the case of the created plasmonic structure was shown to be more sensitive to the changes in the surrounding medium in comparison with the standard sensors based on the bare gold layer.