Enzyme-functionalized thin-cladding long-period fiber grating in transition mode at dispersion turning point for sugar-level and glucose detection

Abstract

Enzyme-functionalized dual-peak long-period fiber grating (LPFG) inscribed in 80-μm-cladding B/Ge codoped single-mode fiber is presented for sugar-level and specific glucose detection. Before enzyme functionalization, the dual-peak LPFG was employed for refractive index sensing and sugar-level detection and high sensitivities of ∼4298.20  nm/RIU and 4.6696  nm/% were obtained, respectively. Glucose detection probe was attained by surface functionalization of the dual-peak LPFG via covalent binding with aminopropyl triethoxysilane used as a binding site. Optical micrographs confirmed the presence of enzyme. The surface-functionalized dual-peak LPFG was tested with D-(+)-glucose solution of different concentrations. While the peak 2 at the longer wavelength was suitable only to measure lower glucose concentration (0.1 to 1.6  mg/ml) recording a high sensitivity of 12.21±0.19  nm/(mg/ml), the peak 1 at the shorter wavelength was able to measure a wider range of glucose concentrations (0.1 to 3.2  mg/ml) exhibiting a maximum resonance wavelength shift of 7.12±0.12  nm/mg/ml. The enzyme-functionalized dual-peak LPFG has the advantage of direct inscription of highly sensitive grating structures in thin-cladding fibre without etching, and most significantly, its sensitivity improvement of approximately one order of magnitude higher than previously reported LPFG and excessively tilted fibre grating (Ex-TFG) for glucose detection.