Simulation of Trenched Coreless Silica Fiber Sensor for Refractive Index Measurement

Abstract

Coreless silica fiber has garnered a lot of attention in the field of sensors. Nevertheless, the limitation of conventional and unique coreless silica fiber sensors such as complex simulation, and high fragility of its physical structure needs to be considered. This work presents a simulation of a new coreless silica fiber design in a form of a trenched coreless silica fiber sensor to overcome these limitations. To optimize the sensor’s design, the trench depth was changed in the range of 0 μm to 50 µm at a fixed trench width of 50 μm. The change in analyte refractive index ranging from 1.3000 RIU to 1.4000 RIU was performed to evaluate the simulated sensing performance which showed that the increase in trench depth improved the sensor’s sensitivity with 50 μm being the trench depth at which the highest sensitivity was recorded. Later, the results obtained was compared to the closest in term of design which is the standard coreless fiber. Overall, the trenched coreless silica fiber design provided better sensitivity and is highly capable as of has a new refractive index sensor with an estimated sensitivity of up to 6.62726x10-7, higher than the simulated standard coreless fiber sensor with that of 2.22053x10-7.