Photonics crystal fiber Raman sensors

Hollow core photonic crystal fiber (HCPCF) employs a guiding mechanism fundamentally different from that in conventional index guiding fibers. In an HCPCF, periodic air channels in a glass matrix act as reflectors to confine light in an empty core. As a result, the interaction between light and glass can be very small. Therefore, HCPCF has been used in applications that require extremely low non-linearity, high breakdown threshold, and zero dispersion. However, their applications in optical sensing, especially in chemical and biological sensing, have only been extensively explored recently. Besides their well-recognized optical properties the hollow cores of the fibers can be easily filled with liquid or gas, providing an ideal sampling mechanism in sensors. Recently, we have demonstrated that by filling up a HCPCF with gas or liquid samples, it is possible to significantly increase the sensitivity of the sensors in either regular Raman or surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) applications. This is because the confinement of both light and sample inside the hollow core enables direct interaction between the propagating wave and the analyte. In this paper, we report our recent work on using HCPCF as a platform for Raman or SERS in the detection of low concentration greenhouse gas (ambient CO2), biomedically significant molecules (e.g., glucose), and bacteria. We have demonstrated that by filling up a HCPCF with gas or liquid samples, it is possible to significantly increase the sensitivity of the sensors in either regular Raman or SERS applications.