Fiber optic surface plasmon resonance sensor based on a silver-coated large-core suspended-core fiber

A fiber optic surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor based on a silver-coated large-core suspended-core fiber was proposed. A dynamic chemical liquid phase deposition method was adopted to fabricate a set of proposed sensors with different silver layer thicknesses. A stable fully spiced all-fiber sensing system was established to evaluate the performance of the fabricated sensors. The results show that the proposed sensor with a thicker silver layer exhibits higher sensitivity and figure of merit. The performance of the proposed sensor is comparable to those of the conventional solid-core fiber and hollow fiber SPR sensors and much higher than that of the metal nanoparticle functionalized suspended-core fiber sensors.