ULTRAHIGH SENSITIVE REFRACTIVE INDEX SENSOR BASED ON TAPERED MULTICORE OPTICAL FIBER

Year 2018, Volume: 60 Issue: 2, 1 - 14, 01.08.2018

Zinah Abbas Al-mashhadanı İsa Navruz

Abstract

The
refractive index sensors based on tapered optical fiber are attractive for many
industries due to sensing capability in a variety of application. In this
paper, we proposed a refractive index sensor based on multicore fiber (MCF)
sandwiched between two standard single mode fibers (SMF). The sensor consisting
of three sections, SMF- MCF-SMF is structurally simple and can be easily
produced by joining these parts. The MFC contains seven cores and these cores
are surrounded by a single cladding. The sensing region is obtained by tapering
the MCF section where the evanescent field is generated. The single mode
propagating along the SMF is stimulated at the first joint and is coupled to
the cladding modes. These modes interfere with the core mode after passing the
second joint. The transmission spectrum of the output light at the end of the
third section is sensitive to the refractive index (RI) of the environment
surrounding the cladding. In this study, the RI sensitivity of the proposed
sensor was analyzed numerically and the RI sensing characteristic was
investigated for different measurement ranges and different structural
configurations. The results show that the refractive index sensitivity is
extremely high in the range of about 1.44 to 1.45 RIU.  In addition, the developed sensor has many
advantages such as compact construction, low cost, small size and easy
fabrication. It also has the potential to perform high precision measurements
in fields such as biochemistry, health care and biological applications.

Keywords

Multicore fiber, refractive index sensing, tapered fiber, high sensitivity, beam propagation

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