Development of Experimental Set for Determination of Refractive Index of Liquid Using Optical Fiber

Abstract

The construction of an experimental set for measurement of refractive index of liquids using fiber optics has been described in this work. The experimental set is aimed for demonstration in physics high school class. A prototype fabricated in laboratory composes of plastic-clad-plastic (PCP) optical fiber with the length of 50 cm, fiber optic transmitter diode, fiber optic phototransistor detector, and liquid container. The diameter and refractive index of the core of PCP optical fiber were 1 mm and 1.492, respectively. The thickness and refractive index of fiber cladding were 1.2 mm and 1.417, respectively. The fiber cladding surface at the central region was removed approximately 5 cm long to form a sensor area. This sensor area was inserted into a cylindrical glass which acted as the container. One end of the fiber was connected to the transmitter diode with a wavelength of 660 nm, and the other end was connected to the detector. A digital multimeter was used to measure an output voltage from the detector. In this work, the effect of water temperature on its refractive index was determined. The results showed that the water refractive index decreased with increasing water temperature and result in the increase of measured output voltage. Furthermore, it was found that the output voltage measured at different temperatures of water depends linearly on water refractive index.