Design and numerical analysis of microstructured-core octagonal photonic crystal fiber for sensing applications

Abstract

This paper presents an octagonal photonic crystal fiber (O-PCF) for liquid sensing, in which both core and cladding are microstructured. Some propagation characteristics of proposed structure have been investigated by using the full vectorial finite element method (FEM). Confinement loss and sensitivity are examined and compared with varying number of rings, core diameter, diameter of air holes in cladding ring and pitch. It is found that sensitivity is increased for the increment pitch value, air filling ratio, core diameter, inner ring diameter as well as number of rings. At the same time confinement loss is significantly decreased. It is also found that the increment of pitch by keeping the same air filling ratio increases the sensitivity and loss. Investigating the effects of different parameters, an O-PCF structure is designed which has a significantly higher relative sensitivity and lower confinement loss. Keywords: Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF), Octagonal photonic crystal fiber (O-PCF), Evanescent field, Chemical sensor, Sensitivity and confinement loss