Optical Fiber Refractometer Based on Etched-Stress Applying Parts PANDA Fiber

Author

Haiyu Tang ; Jun Zhu ; Hao Yin ; Rui Wang ; Hui Wang ; Benli Yu

Author_Institution

Key Lab. of Opto-Electron. Inf. Acquisition & Manipulation of Minist. of Educ., Anhui Univ., Hefei, China

Volume

26

Issue

13

fYear

2014

fDate

1-Jul-14

Firstpage

1356

Lastpage

1359

Abstract

In this letter, an optical fiber refractometer fabricated by etched-stress applying parts (SAPs) PANDA fiber is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The proposed structure depends on an in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI), which is induced by the two orthogonal polarization modes of the fiber and the dip wavelength shifts as a function of the surrounding medium refractive index. In the sensor area, one of the axes is quickly etched to near the fiber core modifying the evanescent field, which results in increasing birefringence variation by the surrounding medium. The fiber has been chemically etched with the etched length of 5 cm. High sensitivity of 151 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) within the linear sensing range from 1.3401 to 1.3997 and a resolution of 1.32 × 10^-4 RIU are obtained for the proposed liquid refractive index sensor.

Keywords

birefringence; etching; fibre optic sensors; optical fibre fabrication; optical fibre polarisation; optical fibre testing; refractive index; refractive index measurement; birefringence variation; chemical etching; dip wavelength shifts; etched-stress applying part PANDA fiber; evanescent field modification; in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer; liquid refractive index sensor; optical fiber refractometer fabrication; orthogonal polarization modes; size 5 cm; Chemicals; Etching; Optical fiber polarization; Optical fiber sensors; Refractive index; Sensitivity; Chemical sensors; etched-stress applying parts PANDA fiber; in-fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer; refractive index measurements;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2014.2324021

Filename

6815678