Ultrafast Laser Fabrication of Novel Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer Sensors and Its Cost-Effective Alternative Manufacturing Methods

Abstract

The recent progresses of fiber sensor fabrication in our group are reviewed. Novel inline fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensors with various structures are proposed and manufactured by femtosecond laser fabrication and fusion splicing for high-quality sensing of refractivity-sensitive parameters such as temperature, concentration, humidity, pressure, stress and strain: a) for an MZI sensor with a trench on a single-mode fiber, the refractive index (RI) sensitivity of acetone vapor is about 104 nm/RIU (refractive index unit) and the temperature sensitivity is 51.5 pm/°C from 200 to 875°C; b) For an MZI consisting of two micro-air-cavities, the sensitivity is 501.5 nm/RIU and the detection limit is 1.994×10-6 RIU at the refractive index of 1.4; c) to reduce the fabrication cost, a new fusion-splicing based method is proposed to fabricate MZI sensors; the sensitivity is 664.57 nm/RIU with a detection limit of 1.5×10ˉ⁶ RIU and its cost is tens of times cheaper than those of commercialized long period fiber Gratings; Also, 5×10ˉ⁵ acetone vapors are successfully detected by the MZI sensors coated with zeolite thin films.

Department(s)

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

Second Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Keywords and Phrases

Femtosecond Laser Micromachining; Fusion Splicing; Novel Fiber Mach-Zehnder Interferometer; Sensors

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Citation

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2011 Science Press, All rights reserved.

Publication Date

01 Jan 2011

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