The Study On Fiber-Optic Miniature Sensor And Its Key Technologies

Fiber-optic sensors have been widely applied in many fields due to their unique advantages, including biomedical, health care, environmental monitoring military field etc. Recently, with the development of fiber-optic sensing technologies, It desires higher demands on the technologies related to compact size, low cost and low power-consumption. In this paper, we carried out a series studies on the key technologies of the fiber-optic miniature sensors, such as the metallization, pattern and functionalization of the optical fiber surface. Furthermore, the fiber-optic miniature sensor based on nano-thick silver diaphragm was proposed and its sensing properties were investigated.The first chapter describes the key technologies related to realize fiber-optic miniature sensors, including the etching of the optical fiber, the metallization of the optical fiber surface, the pattern on the optical fiber surface, the purpose and significance of this paper are also presented in here.The second chapter, we fabricated the silver film on the surface of optical fiber by the electroless plating method and electroplating method. The experimental result shows that the silver film is dense and the thickness of the film can be controlled by changing the experimental parameters. In order to fabricate more types of fiber-optic miniature sensors, we achieved the spin coating method on the optical fibers by the vacuum thermal sputtering method.The third chapter, we fabricated the lithography templates by use film materials, which is a low cost method compared with the conventional templates, successfully transferred the patterns of the templates to the silicon wafer. In this way, we manufactured some kinds of optical fiber clamps. Finally, we achieved the pattern on the fiber surface.The fourth chapter, we fabricated the Fabry-Perot fiber-optic miniature sensor based on the nano-thick silver diaphragm through aforementioned electroless plating method. Such a sensor was tested. The pressure sensitivity of70.5nm/kPa and the temperature sensitivity of39.3km/kPa were measured, which are higher than that of the other sensors proposed in other literatures. The acoustic response and the young’s modulus of the nano-thick silver diaphragm are also investigated and discussed in this chapter.The fifth chapter summarizes the total work of this paper and gives some suggestions for the further study in the future.