We fabricated and characterized sensitivity enhanced surface plasmon resonance sensor based on cladding etched multimode polymer optical fiber coated with gold/Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) bilayer. The fibre use for experiment has a core and cladding of 486μm and 500 μm, respectively. The cladding is completely etched out from 1cm long section of a piece of fibre using Dimethyl Sulfoxide. The etched section of the fiber is coated with 40nm gold layer followed by 30nm ITO layer. The sensor was tested by immersing it in a glucose solution of different refractive index ranging from 1.33 to 1.40. The experimental result shows that, the sensor exhibited a refractive index sensitivity of 2053 nm/RIU for the range 1.33-1.37 RIU and 3081 nm/RIU for the range 1.37-1.40 RIU, both with R-squared of 0.99. These sensitivity values are higher than other sensitivity enhancement approaches reported in the literatures. We belive that, the proposed sensor has the advantages of simple structure and easy fabrication process (which does not require tedious side polishing), cost effective and high sensitivity, which has a potential prospect in the field of biosensing and chemical sensing.
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