High-sensitivity strain sensors based on in-fiber reshaped air bubbles

Abstract

We reported a few high-sensitivity optical strain sensors based on different types of in-fiber FPIs with air bubble cavities those were fabricated by use of a commercial fusion splicer. The cavity length and the shape of air bubbles were investigated to enhance its tensile strain sensitivity. A FPI based on a spherical air bubble was demonstrated by splicing together two sections of standard single-mode fibers, and the spherical air bubble was reshaped into an elliptical air bubble by mean of repeating arc discharge, so the strain sensitivity of the FPI based on an elliptical air bubble was enhanced to 6.0 pm⁄μe owe to the decrease of the air cavity length. Moreover, a unique FPI based on a rectangular air bubble was demonstrated by use of an improved technique for splicing two sections of standard single mode fibers together and tapering the splicing joint. The sensitivity of the rectangular-bubble-based strain sensor was enhanced to be up to 43.0 pm/μe and is the highest strain sensitivity among the in-fiber FPI-based strain sensors with air bubble cavities reported so far. The reason for this is that the rectangular air bubble has a sharply taper and a thin wall with a thickness of about 1 μm. Moreover, those strain sensors above have a very low temperature sensitivity of about 2.0 pm/oC. Thus, the temperature-induced strain measurement error is less than 0.046 μe/oC.