Fabrication And Sensing Application Of Micro/Nanofiber

Optical fiber sensors are widely used in many fields due to their many advantages such as resistance to electromagnetic interference and chemical corrosion, high sensitivity, remote-sensing et al. In recent years, with the increasing demand for miniaturized sensors, optical microfiber based sensors attracted a lot of attentions. The advantages of microfiber as a novel miniaturized platform for sensing are high sensitivity, quick-response, miniature size and large evanescent field. In this work we studied and implemented several microfiber sensors, which were fabricated from optical fibers.1. We fabricated microfibers with waist diameter of 6μm via fusion biconical tapering method. A microfiber loop interferometer was then fabricated and studied. The transmission characteristics and response to relative humidity change have been investigated.2. A adiabatic microfiber interferometer was fabricated by tapering single mode fiber via fusion biconical tapering method and used as a highly sensitive refractive index sensor and relative humidity sensor. The sensing mechanism of microfiber was studied based on the mode interference theory. The achieved highest sensitivity is 16539 nm/RIU and 0.041 nm/%RH, respectively.3. A compact all-fiber magnetic field strength sensor based on a magnetic fluid (MF)-coated microfiber was proposed and studied. The sensing principle was analyzed. The achieved sensitivity was -0.29 nm/Oe.4. A compact magnetic field strength sensor based on a MF-coated highly Ge-doped microfiber was proposed and studied. The achieved sensitivity was -0.2 dB/Oe.