Liquid crystal filled surface plasmon resonance thermometer.

A novel surface plasmon resonance (SPR) thermometer based on liquid crystal (LC) filled hollow fiber is demonstrated in this paper. A hollow fiber was internally coated with silver and then filled with LC. The SPR response to temperature was studied using modeling and verified experimentally. The results demonstrated that the refractive index of LC decreases with the increasing temperature and the variation can be detected by the resonance wavelength shift of the plasmon resonance. The temperature sensitivities were 4.72 nm/°C in the temperature range of 20 to 34.5 °C and 0.55 nm/°C in the temperature range of 36 to 50 °C, At the phase transition temperature between nematic and isotropic phases of the LC, the temperature sensitivity increased by one order of magnitude and a shift of more than 46 nm was observed with only a 1.5 °C temperature change. This sensor can be used for temperature monitoring and alarming, and can be extended for other physical parameter measurement.