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A highly sensitivity balloon-like fiber interferometer based on ethanol coating is presented in this paper. The Mach–Zehnder interferometer is formed by bending a single-mode fiber to a balloon-like structure and nested in the Teflon tube. Then, an ethanol solution was filled into the tube of the balloon-like fiber interferometer by the capillary effect. Due to the high sensitivity of the refractive index (RI) of ethanol solutions to temperature, when the external temperature varies, the optical path difference changes. The change in temperature can be detected by the shift in the interference spectrum. Limited by the size of the balloon-like structure, three kinds of these structures with different sensitive lengths were prepared to select the best parameters. The sensitive lengths were 10, 15 and 20 mm, respectively, and the RI detection performance of each structure in 10~26% NaCl solutions was investigated experimentally. The results show that when the sensitive length is 20 mm, the RI sensitivity of the sensor is the highest, which is 212.88 nm/RIU. Ultimately, the sensitive length filled with ethanol is 20 mm. The experimental results show that the temperature sensitivity of the structure is 1.145 nm/°C in the range of 28.1 °C~35 °C, which is 10.3 times higher than that of an unfilled balloon-like structure (0.111 nm/°C). The system has the advantages of low cost and easy fabrication, which can potentially be used in high-precision temperature monitoring processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A distributed optical fiber refractive index sensor based on etched Ge-doped SMF in optical frequency domain reflection (OFDR) was proposed and demonstrated. The etched Ge-doped SMF was obtained by only using wet-etching, i.e., hydrofluoric acid solution. The distributed refractive index sensing is achieved by measuring the spectral shift of the local RBS spectra using OFDR. The sensing length of 10 cm and the spatial resolution of 5.25 mm are achieved in the experiment. The refractive index sensing range is as wide as 1.33–1.44 refractive index units (RIU), where the average sensitivity was about 757 GHz/RIU. Moreover, the maximum sensitivity of 2396.9 GHZ/RIU is obtained between 1.43 and 1.44 RIU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An all-fiber glucose sensor is proposed and demonstrated based on a helical intermediate-period fiber grating (HIPFG) produced by using a hydrogen/oxygen flame heating method. The HIPFG, with a grating length of 1.7 cm and a period of 35 μm, presents four sets of double dips with low insertion losses and strong coupling strengths in the transmission spectrum. The HIPFG possesses an averaged refractive index (RI) sensitivity of 213.6 nm/RIU nm/RIU in the RI range of 1.33–1.36 and a highest RI sensitivity of 472 nm/RIU at RI of 1.395. In addition, the HIPFG is demonstrated with a low-temperature sensitivity of 3.67 pm/°C, which promises a self-temperature compensation in glucose detection. In the glucose-sensing test, the HIPFG sensor manifests a detection sensitivity of 0.026 nm/(mg/mL) and a limit of detection (LOD) of 1 mg/mL. Moreover, the HIPFG sensor exhibits good stability in 2 h, indicating its capacity for long-time detection. The properties of easy fabrication, high flexibility, insensitivity to temperature, and good stability of the proposed HIPFG endow it with a promising potential for long-term and compact biosensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beam splitters are vital components in several optical systems. It is highly desirable, and compact beam splitters with ultra-broadband performances, high efficiencies, and large split angles are still being sought. In this paper, we demonstrate and numerically investigate an ultra-broadband and highly efficient optical beam splitter based on a quasi-continuous metasurface. The proposed design is constructed of quasi-continuous triangle-shaped gallium phosphide nanoantennas on a silica substrate. The simple structure can achieve a conversion efficiency and an anomalous transmission intensity above 90% and 0.8 covering the wavelength range of 1537–1826 nm, respectively. The maximum beam split angle in the operating bandwidth reaches 131.84° at the wavelength of 1826 nm. Particularly, the operating bandwidth is still as high as 125 nm with the anomalous transmission intensity above 0.92 and the conversion efficiency exceeding 99%. Moreover, the results show that the performance of the metasurface-based optical beam splitter can be further enhanced by optimizing structural parameters. We also demonstrate the adjustability of the beam splitter by adding refractive index (RI) materials on the surface of the device. The results show that the incident plane wave can be divided into three beams with intensity adjustability. The presented metasurface is very promising in the fields of multiplexers, interferometers, and optical communications, owing to its advantages of ultra-broadband, highly efficient, and large split angle simultaneously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blood glucose concentration is important for metabolic homeostasis in humans and animals. Many diabetic patients need to detect blood glucose daily which burdens community hospitals and family healthcare. Optical fiber sensors are widely used in biomedical detection because of their compact structure, fast response, high sensitivity, low cost, and ease of operation. In this work, we constructed a Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity biosensor for the fast detection of glucose concentration in serum. The femtosecond laser micromachining was applied to fabricate the FP cavity by printing the fiber-tip fixed-supported bridge at the end face of the optical fiber. An additional hemisphere was printed at the center of the outer surface of the bridge to avoid multi-beam interference. The results demonstrated that the proposed biosensor had high refractive index (RI) detection sensitivity, roughly 1039 nm/RIU at a wavelength of 1590 nm, and the detection sensitivity for glucose was around 0.185 nm/ (mg/mL) at a wavelength of 1590 nm. Due to its high sensitivity, compact structure, and fast response, the FP cavity biosensor has great potential to be applied in family healthcare for glucose concentration detection of diabetic patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose and numerically investigate a multi-parameter integrated sensor based on a selectively filled D-shaped photonic crystal fiber (PCF). The simple structure can be used to comprehensively detect refractive index, magnetic field, temperature, and voltage. According to the surface plasmon resonance and directional coupling effect, the PCF is coated with a gold nano-film to detect the refractive index of the external environment. In addition, magnetic fluid (water-based Fe3O4), toluene, and nematic liquid crystal (NLC E7) are selectively filled into different cladding air holes of the D-shaped PCF to realize the different sensing of the magnetic field, temperature, and voltage. The measurement of refractive index, magnetic field, temperature, and voltage are independent of each other, so these four parameters can be measured simultaneously. The sensing characteristics of the proposed structure are investigated systematically by the finite element method. The results show that the sensitivities of refractive index, magnetic field, temperature, and voltage are 4600 nm/RIU, 1.375 nm/Oe, 15.143 nm/°C, and 0.971 nm/V, respectively. The presented design based on materials selectively filled with D-shaped PCF might enable promising application in multi-parameter optical sensing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]