Microfiber-Enabled In-line Fabry–Pérot Interferometer for High-Sensitive Force and Refractive Index Sensing

Author

Shecheng Gao ; Weigang Zhang ; Zhi-Yong Bai ; Hao Zhang ; Wei Lin ; Li Wang ; Jieliang Li

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Opt. Inf. Sci. & Technol., Nankai Univ., Tianjin, China

Volume

32

Issue

9

fYear

2014

fDate

1-May-14

Firstpage

1682

Lastpage

1688

Abstract

A microfiber-enabled Fabry-Pérot interferometer (FPI) constructed by splicing a section of microfiber between two cleaved standard single-mode fibers (SMFs) with unique relative fiber cross section relationship has been proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The opening air cavity between the two SMF ends connected by the microfiber serves as an FP cavity and also a direct sensing head. The sensing characteristics of the FPIs with different cavity lengths and microfiber diameters have been studied. A force sensitivity as high as 167.41 nm/N (~200 pm/με) and a high refractive index (RI) sensitivity of 1330.8 nm/RIU (around a RI of 1.33) have been achieved by using the microfiber-based FPI with ~21 μm cavity length and ~44 μm microfiber diameter. Such a device has several merits such as simple configuration, compactness and reliability in operation owing to the extremely low thermal cross-sensitivities.

Keywords

Fabry-Perot interferometers; fibre optic sensors; force sensors; micro-optics; microcavities; microsensors; optical fibre fabrication; refractive index measurement; splicing; SMF; cavity lengths; compactness; high-sensitive force sensing; microfiber-based FPI; microfiber-enabled inline Fabry-Pérot interferometer; opening air cavity; refractive index sensing; reliability; sensor sensitivity; splicing; standard single-mode fibers; thermal cross-sensitivities; unique relative fiber cross section relationship; Cavity resonators; Force; Optical fiber sensors; Sensitivity; Splicing; Fabry–Pérot interferometer (FPI); force sensor; microfiber; optical fiber sensor; refractive index (RI) sensor;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/JLT.2014.2310205

Filename

6758382