Plasmonic Optical Fibre Sensors for Electrochemical Activities Monitoring in Energy Storage Devices

Abstract

Surface Plasmon resonance (SPR) optical fibre sensors can be used as a cost-effective and relatively simple-to-implement configurations for in situ high sensitivity electrochemical measurements. The flexible configuration, miniaturized size and remote operation ability offer them a multitude of opportunities for single-point sensing in hard-to-reach spaces. The nano-scale plasmonic metal-coating over optical fibre offers the sensor the ability to monitor the electronical and optical information simultaneously, with unprecedented sensitivities and limits of detection. Meanwhile, such sensor provides a multi-resonant mechanism of optical modes (cladding modes and core mode) for high accuracy plasmonic interrogation and inherent elimination of environmental cross talk. In this paper, we briefly introduce the principle and implementation of electrochemical plasmonic optical fibre sensors based on a tilted fibre Bragg grating imprinted in a commercial single-mode fibre and coated with a nanoscale gold film, and our recent studies of in situ and continuous monitoring the electrochemical activities (the potential and the stored charge) of supercapacitors for energy storage devices.