A metal-clad planar polymer waveguide refractive index sensor based on epoxy (EPO) polymer materials by using light intensity interrogation at 850 nm is designed. The polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) material is deployed as the low refractive index (RI) buffer layer in order to better couple the optical guided mode and the surface plasmon polaritons (SPP) mode for working in water environment. The effects of the gold film thickness, PMMA buffer layer thickness, waveguide layer thickness, waveguide width, and gold length on the sensor sensing characteristics have been comprehensively studied. Simulation results demonstrate that the normalized transmission increases quasi-linearly with the increment of RI of the analyte from 1.33 to 1.46. The sensitivity is 491.5 dB/RIU, corresponding to a high RI resolution of 2.6×10⁻⁹ RIU. The designed SPP-based optical waveguide sensor is low-cost, wide-range, and high-precision, and has a broad application prospect in biochemical sensing with merits of miniaturization, flexibility, and multiplexing.

设计了一种基于环氧（EPO）聚合物材料的金属包覆的平面聚合物波导折射率传感器，该传感器使用850 nm处的光强询问。聚甲基丙烯酸甲酯（PMMA）材料被用作低折射率（RI）缓冲层，以便更好地耦合光导模式和表面等离振子极化子（SPP）模式，以便在水环境中工作。全面研究了金膜厚度，PMMA缓冲层厚度，波导层厚度，波导宽度和金长度对传感器感测特性的影响。仿真结果表明，归一化透射率随着分析物RI从1.33到1.46的增加而近似线性增加。灵敏度为491.5 dB / RIU，对应于2.6×10 ^-9的高RI分辨率RIU。设计的基于SPP的光波导传感器价格低廉，范围广，精度高，其在生物化学传感领域的应用前景广阔，具有小型化，柔性化和多路复用的优点。