Characteristics of Ultrasensitive Hexagonal-Cored Photonic Crystal Fiber for Hazardous Chemical Sensing

Abstract

A highly sensitive non-complex cored photonic crystal fiber sensor for hazardous chemical sensing with water, ethanol, and benzene analytes has been proposed and is numerically analyzed using a full-vector finite element method. The proposed fiber consists of a hexagonal core hole and two cladding air hole rings, operating in the lower operating wavelength of 0.8 to 2.6 μm. It has been shown that the structure has high relative sensitivity of 94.47% for water, 96.32% for ethanol and 99.63% for benzene, and low confinement losses of 7.31 × 10−9 dB/m for water, 3.70 × 10−10 dB/m ethanol and 1.76 × 10−13 dB/m benzene. It also displays a high power fraction and almost flattened chromatic dispersion. The results demonstrate the applicability of the proposed fiber design for chemical sensing applications.