Temperature Insensitive Refractometer Using Core and Cladding Modes in Open-Top Ridge Waveguide

In order to overcome the well-known limitation of temperature instability in Bragg grating waveguide sensors, a temperature insensitive open-top ridge waveguide refractometer is developed by using a cladding mode resonance as a temperature reference. The relative shift of the core mode resonance to cladding mode resonance is used to measure the refractive index of substances under test. Specifically, the device fabricated here produces a relative resonance shift of 1 pm for every 5 times10^-4 of measured index change, with a temperature sensitivity ~ 0.5 pm/degC.