Fabrication of a compact reflective long-period grating sensor with a cladding-mode-selective fiber end-face mirror

✍ Scribed by Jiang, Meng; Zhang, A. Ping; Wang, Yang-Chun; Tam, Hwa-Yaw; He, Sailing

• Book ID: 115411930
• Publisher: Optical Society of America
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 836 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1094-4087
• DOI: 10.1364/OE.17.017976

✦ Synopsis

A long-period grating (LPG) based compact optical fiber sensor working in reflection mode is demonstrated. A technique to make a mirror on the cladding region of a fiber end-face to reflect only the cladding modes was realized by growing a polymeric microtip on the core region of the fiber end-face, by photopolymerization, followed by coating the fiber end-face with an aluminum film. Using the cladding-mode-selective fiber end-face mirror, the transmission spectrum of the LPG was "inverted" and reflected. Preliminary results of using the sensor to measure the refractive index of glycerol/water solutions were successfully demonstrated.