Hybrid Plasmonic Waveguide Based Platform for Refractive Index and Temperature Sensing
Santosh Kumar Sahu, Samyuktha K. Reddy, Mandeep Singh, E.A. Avrutin
Abstract
A nanoscale 3D hybrid plasmonic waveguide (HPWG) refractive index-cum- temperature sensor has been proposed and simulated in this work. The aqueous analyte (benzene C <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">6</sub> H <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">6</sub> ) sensing is possible over the wavelength range from <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$1.18~\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> to <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$2.2~\mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> . A well-known refractive index (RI) sensing method (or wavelength interrogation) is considered for the proposed Si-TiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> -SiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> -Au nanostructure. The sensor design includes, titanium dioxide (TiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> ) layer deposited over the silicon dioxide to enhance the overall sensitivity of the HPWG sensor. The finite element method (FEM) based 3D-numerical simulations are performed for an IR band signal, predicting 1022.75 nm/RIU device sensitivity and 2.95 nm/°C temperature sensitivity. The proposed sensor is suitable for next-generation on-chip biochemical sensing applications with nanoscale dimensions, low cost, and high sensitivity.