Ultrasensitive Temperature Sensor With Cascaded Fiber Optic Fabry–Perot Interferometers Based on Vernier Effect

Abstract

We have proposed and experimentally demonstrated an ultrasensitive fiber-optic temperature sensor based on two cascaded Fabry-Perot interferometers (FPIs). Vernier effect that significantly improves the sensitivity is generated due to the slight cavity length difference of the sensing and reference FPI. The sensing FPI is composed of a cleaved fiber end-face and UV-cured adhesive while the reference FPI is fabricated by splicing SMF with hollow core fiber. Temperature sensitivity of the sensing FPI is much higher than the reference FPI, which means that the reference FPI need not to be thermally isolated. By curve fitting method, three different temperature sensitivities of 33.07, -58.60, and 67.35 nm/°C have been experimentally demonstrated with different cavity lengths ratio of the sensing and reference FPI, which can be flexibly adjusted to meet different application demands. The proposed probe-type ultrahigh sensitivity temperature sensor is compact and cost effective, which can be applied to special fields, such as biochemical engineering, medical treatment, and nuclear test.