Surface plasmon resonance sensor based on hollow-core PCFs filled with silver nanowires

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on hollow-core photonic crystal fibre (HC-PCF) filled with silver nanowires is designed. The analyte and silver nanowires are full filled in the air holes of the HC-PCF to realise the SPR sensing, which is more convenient than silver coated in operation. The designed sensor is analysed through numerical simulations and demonstrated by experiments. All the results show that a blue-shift is obtained with increase of the analyte refractive index (RI), and the silver nanowires concentration has no effect on spectral sensitivity. The highest average spectral sensitivity of 14 240 nm/RIU is obtained by experiments, which is higher than that previously reported for the same type of sensors. The sensor is useful for detecting small analyte RI changes, and can also provide a reference for the implementation and application of PCF-SPR sensors with high sensitivity.