An All-Sapphire Fiber Diaphragm-Free Extrinsic Fabry–Perot Interferometric Sensor for the Measurement of Gas Pressure at Ultrahigh Temperature

Abstract

An all-sapphire fiber extrinsic Fabry–Perot interferometer (EFPI) sensor for the measurement of gas pressure at ultrahigh temperature is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensor head is composed of two segments of sapphire fiber and a sapphire capillary. By using the femtosecond (fs) laser micromachining, a through hole is inscribed in the sapphire capillary wall to allow the gas flow. This EFPI is used to measure the pressure in the temperature range of 25 °C–1400 °C by monitoring the optical cavity length (OCL) of the interferometer. Experiment results show that the sensor exhibits a good linearity within a pressure range from 0 to 5 MPa at a fixed temperature. The pressure sensitivity of the sensor decreases as the temperature increases, and sensitivities are 1.018 and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$0.188 \mu \text{m}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> /MPa at 25 °C and 1400 °C, respectively. The proposed all-sapphire fiber pressure sensor has the properties of high-temperature resistance, intrinsic safety, small volume, and large measuring range, which can be used in high-temperature and harsh environments.