Title :
Comparison of Silica and Sapphire Fiber SERS Probes Fabricated by a Femtosecond Laser
Author :
Lei Yuan ; Xinwei Lan ; Jie Huang ; Hanzheng Wang ; Lan Jiang ; Hai Xiao
Author_Institution :
Sch. of Mech. Eng., Beijing Inst. of Technol., Beijing, China
Abstract :
Different types of fibers were compared for construction of reflection-based surface-enhanced Raman-scattering (SERS) fiber probes. The probes were made by direct femtosecond (fs) laser micromachining of nanometer structures on the fiber endface and subsequent chemical plating of a thin layer of silver. Rhodamine 6G solutions were used to evaluate the performance of the SERS probes. In comparison with the silica fibers, the single-crystal sapphire fiber has much lower background Raman scattering. The fs laser is found effective to fabricate high-quality sapphire fiber SERS probes for detection of weak Raman signals in a reflection configuration.
Keywords :
fibre optic sensors; high-speed optical techniques; laser beam machining; laser materials processing; micromachining; nanofabrication; nanophotonics; nanostructured materials; optical fibre fabrication; sapphire; silicon compounds; silver; surface enhanced Raman scattering; Ag; Al2O3; Raman signal detection; SiO2; chemical plating; direct femtosecond laser micromachining; nanometer structures; reflection-based SERS fiber probes; rhodamine 6G solutions; sapphire fiber SERS probe fabrication; silica fiber SERS probe fabrication; silver thin layer; single-crystal sapphire fiber; surface-enhanced Raman-scattering; Fiber lasers; Optical fiber LAN; Optical fiber sensors; Optical fibers; Probes; Raman scattering; Silicon compounds; Fiber optic sensors; femtosecond laser; single-crystal sapphirefiber; surface enhanced Raman scattering;
Journal_Title :
Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/LPT.2014.2321505
