Experimental study of temperature response of a microfiber coupler sensor with a liquid crystal overlay

Semenova, Yuliya, Bo, Lin, Wang, Pengfei, Mathews, Sunish, Wu, Qiang, Teng, Mianzhen, Yu, Chongxiu and Farrell, Gerald (2013) Experimental study of temperature response of a microfiber coupler sensor with a liquid crystal overlay. In: Fifth European Workshop on Optical Fibre Sensors. SPIE, Bellingham, 87942L. ISBN 9780819496348

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Abstract

The paper presents the results of experimental studies of the temperature dependence of a microfibre coupler (MFC) with a waist diameter of ~4 μm covered with a layer of liquid crystal (LC) material. The microfiber coupler is fabricated by fusing together and tapering of two standard telecom fibers using a microheater brushing technique, followed by partially embedding the structure in a low-refractive index UV curable polymer (Efiron PC-363) for stability and later by placing a thin heated LC layer over the polymer-free uniform taper waist region. The temperature dependence of the embedded in polymer MFC sensor before the application of the LC layer demonstrates a redshift of the coupler’s spectrum with an average sensitivity of ~0.5 nm/°C in the temperature range of 14-70 °C. The application of the LC overlay increases the average temperature sensitivity to ~0.7 nm/°C. The demonstrated device offers several advantages such as ease of fabrication and light coupling, the potential for better stability and the possibility of electric field tuning for realizing temperature, electric field, bio-, chemical sensors and tunable add-drop filters for fiber communication systems. Further work is ongoing to explore various tuning mechanisms of the MFC spectrum.

Item Type:	Book Section
Subjects:	F300 Physics H600 Electronic and Electrical Engineering
Department:	Faculties > Engineering and Environment > Mathematics, Physics and Electrical Engineering
Depositing User:	Ay Okpokam
Date Deposited:	29 May 2015 12:02
Last Modified:	12 Oct 2019 19:07
URI:	http://nrl.northumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/22681

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