Fiber optic sensor based on surface plasmon resonance with nanoparticle films

This paper reports on a novel design of a fiber optic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on nanoparticle metal film. The performance of the proposed sensor in terms of its signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and sensitivity under different conditions related to the film with spherical gold nanoparticles embedded in a host material is theoretically analyzed. In particular, the effect of the parameters such as gold particle size, film thickness, and refractive index of host material is studied and the possible explanation, whenever required, is given. The numerical results presented in this paper leads to fulfill the requirement of significant optimization of the important design parameters to achieve a high SNR and sensitivity of a fiber optic SPR sensor with nanoparticle films.