Refractive Index Sensing Using Tamm Plasmons in Photonic Quasicrystals

In this paper, we have conducted a thorough investigation into the characteristics, behavior and formation of Optical plasmon Tamm states in an aperiodic metal distributed Bragg reflector geometry and also theoretically demonstrated the refractive index sensor based on the specific geometry. We focused on a particular structure known as a one-dimensional photonic quasi-crystal, where the layers are arranged in a Fibonacci sequence. The reflection and transmission characteristics of electromagnetic wave through the multilayer geometry are studied and investigated using transfer matrix method. Additionally, we performed a comparative analysis between periodic and aperiodic structures, assessing their sensitivity, detection accuracy, quality factor, and figure of merit for a refractive index sensor operating within the visible wavelength range. We could achieve a maximum sensitivity of 221 nm/RIU for which the periodic structure yielded a figure of merit of 26.89 RIU⁻¹, quality factor of 71.3 and a detection accuracy of 0.12 nm⁻¹. For the aperiodic structure we achieved a maximum sensitivity of 213 nm/RIU with figure of merit value of 24.32 RIU⁻¹, quality factor of 82.8 and detection accuracy value equal to 0.11 nm⁻¹. These values can further be tuned by varying the geometrical parameters of the structures along with different spacer layer thickness. The present study will be extremely useful for active and passive optoelectronic miniature devices in future.