Design of Highly Sensitive Photonic Crystal Fiber for Sensing Harmful Chemicals

Abstract

Highly sensitive Photonic Crystal Fiber (PCF) has been designed and investigated for sensing the most harmful chemicals that exist in the world. The proposed structure of PCF consists of a solid circular core in which the samples of the chemicals are to be filled, surrounded by a hexagonal air-hole ring. The outermost cladding region comprises circular air-holes arranged in a helical (spiral) manner. Moreover, the sensitivity ratio of the liquid samples is investigated with respect to the wavelength. Sensitivity is monitored by checking for different wavelengths that range from 0.4μm to 1.85μm. With this proposed structure, the relative sensitivity of the chemicals such as paraffin liquid (n=1.48), pyridine (n=1.51), and bromobenzene (n=1.56) are found to be 78.49%, 82.99%, and 89.34% respectively. The proposed PCF structure is used to detect chemicals and any liquids due to its high sensitivity, large effective mode area, and low confinement loss.