A polyaniline/platinum coated fiber optic surface plasmon resonance sensor for picomolar detection of 4-nitrophenol.

The paper reports for the first time an innovative polyaniline (PANI)/platinum (Pt)-coated fiber optic-surface plasmon resonance (FO-SPR) sensor used for highly-sensitive 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) pollutant detection. The Pt thin film was coated over an unclad core of an optical fiber (FO) using a DC magnetron sputtering technique, while the 4-NP responsive PANI layer was synthetized using a cost-effective electroless polymerization method. The presence of the electrolessly-grown PANI on the Pt-coated FO was observed by field-emission scanning electron microscopy and subsequently evidenced by energy dispersive X-ray analysis.

Abelès method revisited.

The Abelès method is a classical method for determining the refractive index of dielectric thin films. In this paper we examine the main features of the method in a formal manner, using closed-form equations, and we show that the method is ambiguous in certain yet unreported situations.