Self-assembled colloidal photonic crystal on the fiber optic tip as a sensing probe

This paper presents an effective and efficient method to fabricate novel fiber optic sensing probes. The new, simple, and low cost approach is based on a 3-D photonic crystal dielectric structure directly deposited on the tip of a multimode optical fiber through the self-assembly of colloidal crystals (CCs) via a vertical deposition technique. Here, the CC is made of polystyrene nanospheres with 200 nm diameter, and the optical fiber is a UV-vis fiber with a core diameter of 200 μm. The obtained fiber probes exhibit a resonant peak at 480 nm and an amplitude enhancement of 3.7 with respect to the bare fiber; these results are highly repeatable. A numerical tool based on a finite element method analysis has been developed to study and analyze the 3-D subwavelength structures. Numerical results are in good agreement with the observed experimental spectra. Moreover, refractive index measurements have been carried out, revealing a sensitivity of up to 445 nm/RIU in the 1.33-1.36 values range. The achieved performances, which have been obtained by using very small active areas and an easy and reliable fabrication procedure, demonstrate the future perspectives of these fiber-optic probes for chemical and biological sensing applications.