A novel flowmeter composed of a liquid crystal-filled nested capillary is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the nested capillary are excited by a tapered fiber coupled perpendicularly to the nested capillary. The WGM transmission spectrum of the fiber taper was optimized to achieve the highest possible quality (Q) factor by moving the capillary along the axis of the fiber taper. The air flowing through the capillary cools it down, which leads to a temperature-induced change of the refractive index of the nematic liquid crystal. This change in turn leads to a spectral shift of the WGM resonances, which can be linked to the airflow speed in capillary. A sensitivity of 0.242 nm/sccm has been demonstrated in our experiment. The proposed sensor provides a new platform for WGM flowmeters and offers the advantages of high sensitivity and miniature size.
A strip titanium dioxide (TiO2) waveguide is designed for highly coherent mid-infrared (MIR) supercontinuum (SC) generation. For the designed TiO2 waveguide, three zero-dispersion wavelengths (ZDWs) are obtained through adjusting the waveguide structure parameters. The three ZDWs are located at 1.53, 3.96, and 5.43 μm, respectively. The nonlinearity coefficient γ is calculated as 1.12 W − 1 m − 1 at wavelength 3.1 μm. By optimizing the pump pulse parameters, the highly coherent MIR SCs are generated when the hyperbolic secant pump pulse with a duration of 80 fs, peak power of 1 kW, and wavelength of 3.1 μm is launched into the TiO2 waveguide and propagated 4.2-mm in length. The obtained SC covers a wavelength range from 1.71 to 9.90 μm (more than 2.5 octaves). Our research results can find important applications in MIR photonics and spectroscopy, biophotonics, optical precision measurement, etc.
An ultra-short polarization beam splitter (PBS) based on a dual-core photonic crystal fiber (PCF) with the surface plasmon resonance effect is proposed. The finite-element method is used to investigate the coupling characteristics between the core mode and surface plasmon polariton mode. The influences of the PCF structure parameters on the coupling length and coupling length ratio are also investigated. The normalized output powers of the x-polarization and y-polarization are calculated, and the optimized PBS achieves an ultra-short length of 62.5 μm. The splitting bandwidth of 110 nm (1.51 to 1.61 μm) is achieved when the extinction ratio (ER) is less than −20 dB. The minimum ER reaches −71 dB at the wavelength of 1.55 μm. The proposed PBS has an important application in high-speed optical communication systems.
KEYWORDS: Silica, Chemical analysis, Capillaries, Sensors, Bioalcohols, Coating, Principal component analysis, Chemical compounds, Interferometers, Single mode fibers
A simple fused silica capillary interferometric (FSCI) sensor has been proposed and investigated for the detection and analysis of multiple chemical compounds content in aqueous solutions. The sensor was fabricated by splicing a commercially available fused silica capillary (FSC) with two single mode fibers to create a 0.7 cm long air cavity. The fiber surface was functionalized with two different polymers: poly (allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) and sol-gel silica in sequence using a layer-by-layer deposition method. The operating principle of the sensor relies on light interference in the fused silica capillary cavity due to adhesion of the different chemical compounds on the functional coating surface. Studies of the sensors response to the presence of five different compounds in water solutions at different concentrations have been carried out and the results have been analyzed using the principal component analysis (PCA). This work is a preliminary investigation towards the development of a novel method for assessment of content and quality of alcoholic beverages in real time using functionalized FSCIs.
A high-sensitivity temperature sensor based on a singlemode-multimode-polymer filled hollow core fibre-multimode-singlemode (SMHMS) fibre structure is proposed. This sensor was made from a short section of hollow core fibre filled with a high thermo-optic coefficient (TOC) polymer with a refractive index close to that of the fibre cladding, fusion spliced between two singlemode-multimode (SM) fibre structures. This sensor effectively improves the temperature sensitivity by over 200 times by comparison to a conventional singlemode-multimode-singlemode (SMS) fibre structure. In this report, we experimentally demonstrate that the proposed sensor provides a high temperature sensitivity of 2.16 nm/°C.
KEYWORDS: Sensors, Magnetism, Magnetic sensors, Fiber lasers, Fiber Bragg gratings, Temperature metrology, Microsoft Foundation Class Library, Microfluidics, Fiber optics sensors, Wavelength division multiplexing
In this paper we propose and investigate a novel magnetic field sensor based of a ring erbium-doped fiber laser combined with a fiber Bragg grating and a Sagnac loop containing a microfiber coupler and magnetic fluid. In addition to the magnetic field sensing capability, the proposed structure can simultaneously provide temperature information. Thanks to the dual-ring structure of the MFC-Sagnac loop and the FBG-assisted resonant cavity, the output has two distinct laser peaks. Experimentally demonstrated magnetic field sensitivity of one of the laser peaks is 15 pm/mT in the magnetic field range from 0 to 100 mT. The spectral position of the second laser peak is independent on the magnetic field but shifts towards long wavelengths with a sensitivity of 13 pm/°C.
A simple volatile organic compound (VOC) sensor based on a tapered small core singlemode fiber (SCSMF) structure is reported. The tapered SCSMF fiber structure with a waist diameter of 7.0 μm is fabricated using a customized microheater brushing technique. Silica based material containing immobilized Nile red was prepared by a sol-gel method and was used as a coating applied to the surface of the tapered fiber structure. Different coating thicknesses created by a 2-pass and 4-pass coating process are investigated. The experiments demonstrate that both sensors show a linear response at different gas concentrations to all three tested VOCs (methanol, ethanol and acetone). The sensor with a thicker coating shows better sensitivities but longer response and recovery times. The best measurement resolutions for the 4-pass coating sensor are estimated to be 2.3 ppm, 1.5 ppm and 3.1 ppm for methanol, ethanol and acetone, respectively. The fastest response and recovery time of 1 min and 5 min are demonstrated by the sensor in the case of methanol.
In this paper, we propose a novel approach to measurements of low relative humidity (RH) levels based on the whispering gallery modes (WGMs) phenomenon in a silica microsphere resonator coated with Agarose. The spectral dips of the WGM resonances excited in the proposed sensor depend strongly on the changes in the refractive index (RI) of the coating material as well as the surrounding RI. A study of the humidity-induced RI changes in a thin Agarose layer, applied to the surface of a 162 μm-diameter silica microsphere was carried out by correlating the experimental results and numerical simulations performed using the perturbation theory. We experimentally demonstrate a linear sensing characteristic in a low-humidity range from 10% to 45% RH. The estimated quality factor of the micro-resonator is 2.82×106 and detection limit for the sensor is 0.057 %RH, corresponding to the RI resolution of 8.4×10-7 RIU.
In this paper, a novel technique was proposed to improve the sensing performance by employing wavelength diversity in Brillouin optical time domain reflectometry (BOTDR). This technique enables to maximize the launch pump power to achieve a higher measurement accuracy, without activating the nonlinear effects, which limit the conventional BOTDR performance. Experimentally, we have demonstrated the proposed technique, that provides measurement accuracy improvement of 3.6 times at far end of the sensing fibre compared to the conventional BOTDR system.
A novel fiber sensor for simultaneous measurement of ammonia gas concentration and temperature is proposed. The sensor is fabricated from two sections of single-mode fiber which are cleaved and then a fusion splicer and which is then used to fabricate spherically shaped structures at the end facets. The fusion arc is used to soften the glass which naturally assumes a spherical shape due to surface tension. A short section of multimode fiber is then fusion spliced with the two spherical-shaped ends of the single mode fibers so both the core modes and the cladding modes of the multimode fiber are excited to create two kinds of interference dips: One is created by core modes only which is not sensitive to ammonia gas since the core is isolated by the cladding so the effective refractive index of the core does not change when the refractive index of the environment changes, The other dip is created by the coupling of the core mode and cladding mod, which with a suitable coating is sensitive to ammonia gas. Silica sol-gel was prepared and coated on the fiber surface as a sensing layer for detecting ammonia gas concentration. The experimental results show that the two dips have linear wavelength shift responses but with different sensitivities to ammonia gas concentration (5.03×10-4nm/ppm for dip1 and -2.5×10- 5nm/ppm for dip2) and temperature (0.0067 nm/ºC for dip1 and 0.0149 nm/ºC for dip2. By constructing a wavelength shifts matrix for the two dips vs. ammonia gas concentration and temperature, both the ammonia gas concentration and temperature can be measured simultaneously.
A new type of fiber optic sensor for the detection and quantification of ammonia (NH3) vapor levels is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. This sensor is based on a spherical silica micro resonator coated with porous silica gel. Whispering gallery modes (WGMs) in the micro resonator are excited by evanescent coupling to a tapered fiber with a 3.3 μm waist diameter. The optical properties of the porous silica layer change when it is exposed to ammonia vapor, leading to a spectral shift of the WGM resonant wavelengths. The sensitivity of the proposed sensor has been tested by exposing it to different low level concentrations of ammonia: 4 ppm, 8 ppm, 12 ppm and 30 ppm at a constant relative humidity (50% RH) and constant temperature (23°C). The detection limit is calculated from experimental results as 57 ppb of ammonia for a 282 μm diameter porous silica coated microsphere.
KEYWORDS: Microsoft Foundation Class Library, Sensors, Fiber couplers, Interferometers, Temperature sensors, Refractive index, Structured optical fibers, Temperature metrology, Environmental sensing, Mirrors, Polarization, Sagnac interferometers, Head
This paper examines a technique that utilizes a Sagnac loop with a microfiber coupler (MFC) as a coupler which allows the MFC to operate effectively as a sensor but with larger than normal tapered fiber diameters. The proposed structure is found to be suitable for temperature and refractive index (RI) sensing. It is shown that a variation in the surrounding of the MFC RI results in a shift of the output spectrum, while a temperature variation leads to changes in the intensity of the interference dips. A decrease in the waist diameter of the MFC results in an increase in the sensitivity to temperature. For MFC structures based on a 5.6 μm and a 3 μm fiber waist diameter, the minimum transmission power level of a selected spectral dip decreases by 1.7 dB and 5.03 dB respectively, as the temperature changes from 18 °C to 44 °C. A change in the surrounding RI from 1.334 to 1.395 results in the spectral redshift of 8 nm using a 5.6 μm fiber waist diameter. By functionalizing the surface of the MFC with various materials, the structure could potentially be used for sensing of other parameters.
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