Chemical sensor based on microstructured porous core photonic crystal fiber with high sensitivity

In this paper, a porous core photonic crystal fiber (PC-PCF) based sensor has been proposed for alcohol sensing. In this design of PC-PCF, the cladding is octagonal and the core is hexagonal pattern with circular air holes. For investigating the different characteristics of the PC-PCF such as confinement loss, relative sensitivity and porosity, finite element method (FEM) has been utilized. In this design, various geometric parameters like air hole, pitch value of the cladding region and porous area of the core are gradually varied to optimize the PC-PCF. This PC-PCF offers the optimum relative sensitivity of 63% and confinement loss of 0.21 dB/m for 77% porosity at 1.33 pm absorption wavelength of ethanol. This PC-PCF could be useful for detecting the alcohol such as ethanol (ethyl alcohol).