Fabry-Perot based strain insensitive photonic crystal fiber modal interferometer for inline sensing of refractive index and temperature.

Abstract

We report a highly stable, compact, strain insensitive inline microcavity-based solid-core photonic crystal fiber (SCPCF) modal interferometer for the determination of the refractive index (RI) of an analyte and its temperature. The interferometer is fabricated by splicing one end of SCPCF with single-mode fiber (SMF) and the other end with hollow-core PCF. This is followed by cleaving the part of the solid glass portion possibly present after the microcavity. The formation of the cavities at the end faces of the SCPCF results in reduction of the period of the interference pattern that helps in achieving distinctiveness in the measurement. Three sensor heads have been fabricated, and each has a different length of the collapsed region formed by splicing SMF with SCPCF. The response of the sensors is found to be sensitive to the length of this collapsed region between SMF and SCPCF with a sensitivity of 53 nm/RI unit (RIU) and resolution of 1.8×10(-4) RIU. The temperature response of the sensor is found to be linear, having a temperature sensitivity of 12 pm/°C. In addition to these findings, the effect of strain on the proposed structure is analyzed in both wavelength and intensity interrogation.