High-sensitivity biconical optical fiber SPR salinity sensor with a compact size by fiber grinding technique

For seawater salinity measurement, a high-sensitivity, ultra-compact, and corrosion-resistant biconical optical fiber surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor deposited with a 40 nm thick gold film based on fiber grinding technique was fabricated and demonstrated in this article. The ultra-compact biconical sensing structure with different grinding angles were fabricated by applying the optical fiber grinding machine, and the length of the sensing region was only hundreds of microns. The experimental results indicated that when the grinding angle was 14°, the sensor showed the highest sensitivity: a high refractive index sensitivity of 3965 nm/RIU and a high salinity sensitivity of 0.6898 nm/‰. Meanwhile, this biconical sensor had acceptable repeatability and stability. Therefore, this article demonstrated the feasibility of the biconical structure to improve the sensitivity of fiber-based SPR sensors, and provided a novel and practical solution for seawater salinity measurement.