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Seawater salinity is a critical physical parameter in oceanography, affecting ocean circulation, marine ecosystems, and climate. However, current salinity measurement methods have limitations in terms of efficiency, convenience, and integration. Therefore, the development of advanced salinity measurement technology is crucial for ocean exploration and research. In this study, we designed a high-sensitivity ocean refractive index sensor using the guided-mode resonance, which exhibits superior performance in terms of transmission efficiency (approximately 1), full width at half maximum (0.210 nm), and figure of merit (5675.924). Furthermore, we obtained a set of optimized parameters by conducting a systematic study on the relationship between different structural parameters and resonance wavelength, which significantly improves the performance. Additionally, the variation trend of resonance wavelength with the change of refractive index in seawater was studied, which demonstrates that our optimized scheme achieves highly sensitive seawater salinity measurement with good process tolerance, polarization insensitivity, and a wide wavelength working interval. This high-sensitivity ocean refractive index sensor has great potential for a wide range of applications in future ocean exploration studies, such as ocean environment monitoring, marine ecology management, and oceanographic research. • Refractive index sensing in a simple 2D grating structure. • FOM can be flexibly controlled by geometric parameters and incidence angle. • The object under test with a small refractive index difference can also be detected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we report a novel and compact sensor based on an optic microfiber coupler interferometer (OMCI) for seawater salinity application. The OMCI device is fabricated by connecting Faraday rotating mirrors to the two out-ports of the microfiber coupler, respectively. The sensor signal processing is based on a wavelength demodulation technique. We theoretically analyze the sensing characteristics with different device structure parameters. Besides, the results show that the date reading error decreases with the thinner waist region and longer arm difference. Through the experiment, the reflection spectra red-shifted as the sea water salinity increased; the highest response sensitivity of the OMCI salinity sensor reached 303.7 pm/‰ for a range of 16.6–23.8‰, and the resolution was less than 0.03‰. This study provides a new technical solution for the development of practical optical fiber seawater salinity sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]