Abstract
Optical fibers are being widely utilized as radiation sensors and dosimeters. Benefiting from the rapidly growing optical fiber manufacturing and material engineering, advanced optical fibers have evolved significantly by using functional structures and materials, promoting their detection accuracy and usage scenarios as radiation sensors. This paper summarizes the current development of optical fiber-based radiation sensors. The sensing principles of both extrinsic and intrinsic optical fiber radiation sensors, including radiation-induced attenuation (RIA), radiation-induced luminescence (RIL), and fiber grating wavelength shifting (RI-GWS), were analyzed. The relevant advanced fiber materials and structures, including silica glass, doped silica glasses, polymers, fluorescent and scintillator materials, were also categorized and summarized based on their characteristics. The fabrication methods of intrinsic all-fiber radiation sensors were introduced, as well. Moreover, the applicable scenarios from medical dosimetry to industrial environmental monitoring were discussed. In the end, both challenges and perspectives of fiber-based radiation sensors and fiber-shaped radiation dosimeters were presented.
Highlights
Ionizing radiation science has many applications, ranging from high energy physics, industrial, and medical treatment, to space exploration and national defense
Optical fiber-based radiation sensors show several unique advantages owing to their material and structural features when being used in radiation sensing [3,4,5,6,7,8]
Fiber-derived sensors provide a much wider monitoring range compared to conventional integrated sensors. It is difficult for the conventional integrated sensors to monitor a large area with the point-by-point detection, but for optical fiber sensors being distributed over a very long distance over kilometers, sensing at every point along the fiber becomes possible with the optical time-domain reflectometer (OTDR) technology [6,9]
Summary
Ionizing radiation science has many applications, ranging from high energy physics, industrial, and medical treatment, to space exploration and national defense. Semiconductor sensors, photoelectric sensors, and other integrated sensors based on various principles have been widely studied for radiation sensing applications. These sensors are interfered by electromagnetic fields or other radiation sources, making them malfunction in many scenarios. The diameter of commonly used optical fiber is 125 μm and the diameters of advanced multi-material multi-functional fibers are a few hundred microns, making the whole fiber-based sensors occupy diameters less than 1 mm. Optical fiber sensors are not interfered by external electromagnetic fields, because commonly used fiber materials are non-conductive, which can further improve the confidence of sensing. We give a brief conclusion and outlook
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
