On the application of few layer $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene on fiber optic SPR sensor for performance enhancement

A surface plasmon resonance (SPR) based optical fiber sensor, employing few layers of $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene on a thin gold (Au) film to enhance the sensitivity of the sensor is theoretically proposed. The detection accuracy (DA) and the figure of merit (FOM), the two other important performance parameters, have also been assessed for the proposed configuration. Moreover, a comparative investigation of $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene with transition metal dichalcogenide (TMDC) materials such as $$\hbox {MoS}_{2}$$ , $$\hbox {MoSe}_{{2}}$$ and $$\hbox {WS}_{{2}}$$ coated over Au film is also carried out. The sensor configuration with fiber core/Au layer/few layer $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene comes out to be most sensitive when compared with the analogous configuration having TMDC materials instead of $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene. The proposed sensor configuration shows up to 49% enhancement in the sensitivity by using few layer $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene. Thus, present work divulges potential applications of few layer $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene which comes out to be a promising chemical and bio-sensing material. It is believed that the use of few layer $$\hbox {Ti}_{3}\hbox {C}_{2}$$ MXene could find favorable applications in the designing of high sensitivity SPR based refractive index sensors.