Wagon wheel fiber based multichannel plasmonic sensor.

We proposed the first microstructured optical fiber based multichannel plasmonic sensor design. The large air holes can facilitate sample loading and can be modified to realize two functionalities, dual analyte sensing and self referencing. A theoretical analysis is carried out to simulate these two operation modes and study the influences of the structural variables on the sensor performance. In dual analyte detection, average sensitivity of 6.5 × 10⁻⁶ RIU for each channel can be achieved over a dynamic index range of 1.33 to 1.36. In self referencing operation, the capability of the proposed sensor in nullifying environmental noises has also been demonstrated.