Design, Fabrication, and Sensor Applications of Photonic Crystal Fibers

Abstract

Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) with regularly placed air holes running along the fiber oer flexible design and unique transmission characteristics, like unlimited single-mode operation, that are hard to obtain in conventional optical fibers. In this paper, we will discuss the design, fabrication and sensor applications of photonic crystal fibers, particularly twin-core photonic crystal fibers (TCPCFs) and highly birefringent photonic crystal fibers (HB-PCFs). A numerical analysis of PCFs with various design was performed using a computer code developed with finite element method (FEM). Fabrication of PCFs is mainly based on the well-known stack-and-draw method. Controlled gas pressurization was employed during the fiber drawing process, and the microstructure of PCFs was well preserved by pressurizing the core and cladding regions independently. We will also describe the sensor applications of the fabricated PCFs for measuring the strain, bending, and transverse loads, e.g., TC-PCF-based in-line interferometers and HB-PCF-based birefringent interferometers. In the case of a TC-PCF-based in-line sensor, the small dierence in the eective indices of the two core modes leads to interference fringes, and the birefringence due to the twin cores results in polarization-dependent fringe spacing. A novel intensity-based bend sensor is demonstrated utilizing the bend-induced spatial fringe shift. With a HB-PCF inserted between two linear polarizers, the resulting interference pattern can be used to obtain the transverse load sensitivity for dierent angles of the applied load.