This paper reports on the development, and evaluation, of fiber optic hydrogen sensors based on fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) and an experimental measurement system for long term experiments of fiber optic gas sensors. Two types of palladium metal sensors were manufactured; sputter coated and modified palladium foil with 20 and 100 μm thickness. The responses (at 90 °C with both 1 and 5 % hydrogen) of the coated sensor, the 20 μm and 100 μm foil sensor was found to be 10, 160 and 80 pm respectively to 1 % hydrogen and 25, 480 and 225 pm respectively to 5% hydrogen.
We present a first demonstration of a novel multi-parameter fiber optic (FO) sensor concept based on gold nanoparticles (GNP) embedded in a stimuli-responsive hydrogel material. A hemispherical hydrogel immobilized on the optical fiber end-face forms a low-finesse Fabry-Perot (FP) interferometer. The GNPs exhibit local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) that is sensitive towards the refractive index of the surrounding environment, while the stimuli-responsive hydrogel is sensitive towards specific chemical compounds. We evaluate the quality of the interferometric and LSPR signal as a function GNP concentration and of hydrogel swelling degree stimulated by ethanol solutions. The GNPs shows to have little influence on the visibility of the FP etalon, while LSPR of GNP shows to be sensitive towards the surface refractive index rather than bulk refractive index. This demonstration shows that the sensor concept has the potential to be used in applications such as an intravenous two-parametric real-time sensor for medical purpose.
We propose and demonstrate a distributed fiber sensor based on cascaded microfiber Fabry-Perot interferometers (MFPI) for simultaneous refractive index (SRI) and temperature measurement. By employing MFPI which is fabricated by taper-drawing the center of a uniform fiber Bragg grating (FBG) on standard fiber into a section of microfiber, dual parameters including SRI and temperature can be detected through demodulating the reflection spectrum of the MFPI. Further, wavelength-division-multiplexing (WDM) is applied to realize distributed dual-parameter fiber sensor by using cascaded MFPIs with different Bragg wavelengths. A prototype sensor system with 5 cascaded MFPIs is constructed to experimentally demonstrate the sensing performance.
Gas pressure sensor based on an antiresonant reflecting guidance mechanism in a hollow-core fiber (HCF) with an open microchannel is experimentally demonstrated. The microchannel is created on the ring cladding of the HCF by femtosecond laser to provide an air-core pressure equivalent to the external pressure. The HCF cladding functions as an antiresonant reflecting waveguide, which induces sharp periodic losses in its transmission spectrum. The proposed sensor is miniature, robust, and exhbits a high pressure sensitivity of 3.592 nm/MPa, a low temperature cross-sensitivity of 7.5 kPa/°C.
In this paper, we present a tilted fiber Bragg gratings (TFBG) based surface Plasmon resonance (SPR) labelfree sensors with boronic acid derivative (ABA-PBA) as receptor molecule to detect glycoprotein with high sensitivity and selectivity. Tilted fiber Bragg gratings (TFBG) as a near infrared wavelengths detecting element can be able to excite a number of cladding modes whose properties can be detected accurately by measuring the variation of transmitted spectra. A 10° TFBG coated by 50nm gold film was manufactured to stimulate surface plasmon resonance on the surface of the sensor. The sensor was loaded with boronic acid derivative as the recognition molecule which has been widely used in various areas for the recognition matrix of diol-containing biomolecules. The proposed TFBG-SPR sensors exhibit good selectivity and repeatability with the protein concentration sensitivity up to 2.867dB/(mg/ml) and the limit of detection was 2∗10−5g/ml.
A novel photonic crystal fiber with a Ge nanoparticles-doped germano-silicate core was fabricated by using the MCVD and stack-and-draw processes. Effect of Ge nanoparticles and the air-holes structure on non-resonant optical nonlinearity and supercontinuum generation was investigated.
We developed a high-speed wavelength-swept laser prototype using Fourier domain mode locking (FDML) and a reflection wavelength measuring system that could rapidly measure a fiber Bragg grating (FBG). The prototype FDML laser incorporated a temperature-controlled optical tunable filter and had a sweep bandwidth of 40 nm in the 1.55 μm wavelength band. This system was able to perform high-speed wavelength sweeping with a sweep frequency of 50.7 kHz and had a temporal resolution of 9.9 μs, which was equivalent to half of the laser's sweep cycle, due to the FDML laser's bidirectional swept-wavelength. In this paper, we report on high-speed vibration measurements of several kHz by this system using FBGs.
We present a technique to overcome the random transfer function of fiber-optic direct detection coherent optical time-domain reflectometry (C-OTDR). For this purpose, a standard optical fiber was treated by UV light in order to introduce local strongly scattering segments of definite size and distance to each other. Dynamic strain measurements were performed to demonstrate the sensory benefit in comparison to a non-manipulated fiber section. Our results show, that the modified fiber section exhibits a significant boost in strain sensitivity and in addition reduces the sensor dead time in a temperature-unstable environment as compared to a standard fiber.
Long period fiber grating (LPFG) has been actively researched in bio-sensing applications owing to its ability to sense refractive index (RI) of the surrounding medium. We investigate on the adequacy of the present state of the art to quantify adsorption of bio-molecules on the surface of the fiber confined within few tens of nanometers and possible improvements in the design of sensors suitable for bio-sensing applications.
A new structure sapphire fiber Fabry-Perot (F-P) high-temperature sensor based on sapphire wafer was proposed and fabricated. The sensor uses the sapphire fiber as a transmission waveguide, the sapphire wafer as an Fabry-Perot (F-P) interferometer and the new structure of "Zirconia ferrule-Zirconia tube" as the sensor fixing structure of the sensor. The reflection spectrum of the interferometer was demodulated by a serial of data processing including FIR bandpass filter, FFT (Fast Fourier Transformation) estimation and LSE (least squares estimation) compensation to obtain more precise OPD. Temperature measurement range is from 20 to 1000°C in experiment. The experimental results show that the sensor has the advantages of small size, low cost, simple fabrication and high repeatability. It can be applied for longterm, stable and high-precision high temperature measurement in harsh environments.
Effect of fluorine (F) doping in the core of a birefringent photonic crystal fiber (PCF) on sensing capability of temperature and strain was investigated by using Sagnac loop interferometry. The birefringence of the F-doped PCF was measured to be 1.56x10(-4) at 1550 nm and the temperature and the strain sensitivities of the F-doped PCF were found to increase from -9.6 pm/degrees C/m to -34 pm/degrees C/m and from 3.5 pm/mu epsilon to 6.3 pm/mu epsilon, respectively.
We investigate geometries for efficient coupling of single ions to fiber-coupled light fields for applications in quantum sensing, quantum metrology, and quantum information processing. Specifically, we discuss the integration of fiber-tip microcavities into radio-frequency ion traps. The distortions of the trapping fields induced by the presence of the optical fibers are simulated for a range of ion trap geometries and the most promising arrangements are identified. Finally, we investigate the use of fiber-tip microcavities with non-spherical mirrors for enhanced ion-light coupling at the center of the trap by appropriate shaping of the cavity modes.
A Fabry-Perot based sensor with two coupled hollow microspheres is presented. The sensor was fabricated using fusion splicing techniques, enabling a low-cost, highly reproducible, production. The coupling of the two microspheres gives rise to a highly sensitive strain sensor, reaching a sensitivity of 4.07 pm/µε. The all-silica composition leads to a low thermal sensitivity, making the proposed structure suitable applications in environments with varying external conditions.
The article describes the construction and operation principle of the fibre optic pulse interferometer, which allows detection of mechanical disorders in fibre optic transmission line. Operation of this system is based on the optical pulses interference. Configuration of the system allows stable work of pulse interferometer over distances of several kilometres, with compensation impact of environmental conditions. Unique system detection capabilities obtained by using two independent criteria for alarm signal excitation. The aim of the research was to determine the usefulness of the proposed system to protection of information transmission via fibre-optic transmission networks.
In this paper a fiber optic metallic embedding technique is presented based on laser Brazing manufacturing process. The embedding strategy to follow by the laser Brazing, which consists in three steps, minimizes the thermal stress of the embedded fiber, relaxes microbending strains and reduces damage on the fiber. The minimum embedded fiber optic Ni coating total diameter is 237μm for a successful process with negligible optical loss on the fiber. Fiber Bragg Gratings were successfully embedded in metallic specimens and their strain response was in accordance with their specifications.
We present and demonstrate a novel fiber Michelson interferometer based on cascaded twin core fiber (TCF) and side-hole fiber (SHF) for curvature measurement. The interferometer is fabricated by fusing the TCF and SHF. The interferometer can measure curvature and temperature by monitoring the wavelength change of interferometer spectrum. The experiment investigated sensor's spectral responses to the curvature at different bending directions. Experimental results show that the bending sensitivities of the sensor are -6.968 nm/m -1 and 6.978 nm/m -1 at the bending direction of 0° and 180°, respectively. The temperature sensitivity of the interferometer is 10.37 pm/°C.
The surface-bonding method of the fiber Bragg grating(FBG) sensor is easier to handle than embedding method. However surface bonded FBG sensors have the limitation of the signal characteristics being affected by the bonding layer. In this study, the effects of the bonding length on the surface installed FBG sensor signal characteristics under various load types were empirically investigated. To evaluate the stability of the signal characteristics of the FBG sensors, the strain transfer rate and the multiple peaks ratio of the reflected spectrum were calculated and compared. From the experimental results, the strain transfer ratio and multiple peaks ratio varied because of the different strain gradients formed depending on the applied load type. Therefore, it was found that the effective bonding length for respective load types need to be determined to get a stable signal from the surface bonded FBG sensors.
A highly sensitive gas refractometer based on inverse mode-coupling is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensor has a sandwiched configuration that a tapered four-core fiber is spliced between two standard single mode fibers. In the tapered four-core fiber, inverse mode-coupling from cladding modes to core modes leads to enhanced cladding modes and evanescent fields. The unique waveguide structure (multiple cores arranged close to the fiber cladding) of the four-core fiber enables multiple core modes to sense refractive index change after tapering. The abrupt taper also acts as a bridge between surround refractive index and interference modes (including both cladding and core modes). For the carbon dioxide refractive index (close to 1.0) measurement, the sensor presents a high sensitivity of 922.32 dB/refractive index unit without cross-sensitivity of temperature.
A new instrumentation system for FBG interrogation is proposed. It combines the use of a VCSEL as a tunable laser and an optical frequency comb generator as a selective broadband source. Features such as auto-calibration and wave-length tracking are provided with this interrogation system. First, a fast sweep searches for the FBG spectral position, its reflection profile and finds the best set of operating points for the optical comb. Then, the VCSEL is tuned with the FBG through a feedback loop to withstand large-range slow changes (strain and temperature) and, at the same time, the faster phenomena (vibrations and ultrasounds) are measured by the optical frequency comb generator. In practice, a dual comb is proposed to interrogate actively the FBG reflection in order to obtain radio frequency signals that contain the FBG dynamic-strain due to applied vibrations.
