Polymer optical fibers based surface plasmon resonance sensors and their applications: A review

Polymer optical fibers (POFs) based SPR sensors have a lot of potential in biosensing fields because of their specific merits of good flexibility, high coupling efficiency and easy fabrication. In this context, a review of the recent developments of POFs based SPR sensors is presented. Several materials and structures of POFs and the working principle of optical fiber based SPR sensors are introduced briefly. Moreover, the POFs based SPR sensors with different fiber structures and layer materials are presented in detail, and their sensing performances are compared and discussed. Finally, an overview of the recent progresses for POFs based SPR sensors in the applications of physical and biochemical sensing fields are presented.