https://doi.org/10.1140/epjp/s13360-026-07668-8
Regular Article
Study of external and internal metal coating configurations in photonic crystal fiber plasmonic sensor for multi-cancer cells detection
1
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Silchar, India
2
Tripura Institute of Technology, Narsingarh, Agartala, Tripura, India
3
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, CMR Institute of Technology, 560037, Bengaluru, India
a
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Received:
1
December
2025
Accepted:
8
April
2026
Published online:
12
April
2026
Abstract
This research highlights a comparative study on internal and external metal-coated rectangular-shaped photonic crystal fiber (PCF) sensors for the detection of multiple cancer cells like adrenal, cervical, and blood cancer cells. The proposed sensor architectures utilize the surface plasmon resonance (SPR) phenomenon, where a thin coating of gold (Au) layer is used to excite the plasmonic resonance. The finite element method (FEM) is employed to adjust various structural parameters like radius of air holes and thickness of Au layer by studying the confinement loss spectrum. The 2D and 3D plots of core mode and SPP modes are studied to better visualize the mode field propagation. The simulation upshots revealed that for the blood, adrenal, and cervical cancer cells, the externally coated sensor shows wavelength sensitivities of 6428.57 nm/RIU, 7857.142 nm/RIU, 5416.66 nm/RIU, respectively, and the amplitude sensitivities of 1152.05 RIU−1, 1758.14 RIU−1, and 829.74 RIU−1, respectively. On the other hand, wavelength sensitivities of the internal-coated sensor are 214.28 nm/RIU, 214.28 nm/RIU, and 250 nm/RIU, respectively, and the amplitude sensitivities are 40.62 RIU−1, 45.26 RIU−1, and 45.22 RIU−1 for the blood, adrenal, and cervical cancer cells, respectively. Simulation upshots revealed that the externally coated sensor exhibits better sensitivity and detection capability compared to the internally coated sensor.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2026
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
