Abstract
Optical sensors based on guided mode resonance (GMR) realized in polymers are promising candidates for sensitive and cost effective strain sensors. The benefit of GMR grating sensors is the non-contact, easy optical read-out with large working distance, avoiding costly alignment and packaging procedures. The GMR gratings with resonance around 850–900 nm are fabricated using electron beam lithography and replicated using a soft stamp based imprinting technique on 175 m-thick foils to make them suitable for optical strain sensing. For the strain measurements, foils are realized with both GMR gratings and waveguides with Bragg gratings. The latter are used as reference sensors and allow extracting the absolute strain sensitivity of the GMR sensor foils. Following this method, it is shown that GMR gratings have an absolute strain sensitivity of 1.02 ± 0.05 at 870 nm.
Highlights
Optical sensors are increasingly being used in structural health monitoring because of their immunity to electromagnetic interference, compactness, light weight and high sensitivities.In structural health monitoring, primarily strain is measured, and based on this data other mechanical parameters are calculated taking into account material properties
In the previous section it is shown that the sensitivity towards strain is better for a guided mode resonance (GMR) grating sensor compared to a waveguide Bragg grating sensor
Polymer-based GMR grating sensor foils are presented as strain sensors
Summary
Optical sensors are increasingly being used in structural health monitoring because of their immunity to electromagnetic interference, compactness, light weight and high sensitivities. Polymer optical fiber Bragg gratings (POFBGs) provide a potentially lower cost alternative, albeit with higher transmission losses Due to their different material properties POFBGs can withstand larger strain and are slightly more sensitive [4,5]. The GMR grating sensor foils are made with a stamp-based imprinting technology which allows the definition of nano- or microstructures with very good control over the shape and dimensions of the printed features This technology can be used to imprint GMR gratings in polymer materials on 175 μm-thick polyethylene terephthalate (PET) foils in a potentially cost effective way and with high-throughput by scaling this process to roll-to-roll or roll-to-plate manufacturing [25,26]
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