Fiber Optic Sensors Based on Nano-Films
The combination of fiber optics with sensitive nano-films offers great potential for the realization of novel sensing concepts. Miniatured optical fiber sensors with thin films as sensitive elements could enable new fields of optical fiber sensor applicat
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Abstract The combination of fiber optics with sensitive nano-films offers great potential for the realization of novel sensing concepts. Miniatured optical fiber sensors with thin films as sensitive elements could enable new fields of optical fiber sensor applications. Thin films work as sensitive elements and transducer to get response and feedback from environments, while optical fibers are employed to work as signal carrier. In this chapter fiber optic sensors based on nano-films are reviewed.
1 Introduction In optical engineering of sensing technology, recently the most important enabling technologies are based on structuring of fibres, either longitudinally or transversely. Bragg gratings are typical examples of longitudinally structuring of fibers, while micro-structured fibres (e.g. photonic crystal fibres) are the promising enabling technologies in terms of transversely structuring of fibers. Microstructured fibres, provide materials with dispersion characteristics unattainable with conventional materials, as well as otherwise unfeasible physical characteristics that can be controlled and realized for specific sensing applications. Integration of novel functional material with fiber optic components is one of the new trends in the field of novel sensing technologies. The combination of fiber optics with functional materials offers great potential for the realization of novel sensors. Typically the in optical fibre sensing technology, fibre itself acts as sensing elements and also transmitting elements, such as fiber Bragg grating (FBG) [1], Brillouin or Raman Optical Time Domain Reflectometer (OTDR) [2, 3]. However such sensing components can only detect limited physical parameters such as temperature or strain based on its principle of characteristic wavelength drifts. While the idea of optical fiber sensing technology with nano-films is quite different M. Yang (✉) ⋅ J. Peng ⋅ G. Wang ⋅ J. Dai Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, People’s Republic of China e-mail: [email protected] © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2017 I.R. Matias et al. (eds.), Fiber Optic Sensors, Smart Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation 21, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-42625-9_1
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Fig. 1 Fiber-optic sensors based on thin films and coatings
with the traditional technology, nano-films can be employed as sensing component, therefore many parameters, including chemical or biological parameters, can be detected dependant on the design of different sensing films. When compared to the common fiber sensing technologies such as FBG and OTDR, fiber optic sensors based on nano-films show advantages on the diversity of measurement parameters. However, nano-films can be realized by many techniques including e-beam evaporation [4], magnetron sputtering [5], spin-coating [6], electro-chemical plating [7], etc. The mechanical stability on tiny optical fibers is still problematic, which could be a challenge for industrial applications. Fiber optic sensors with thin films as sensing elements can be plotted in Fig. 1. In principle by integra
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