Abstract
A high-sensitivity relative humidity optical fiber sensor based on an intermodal interference structure is proposed. In order to enhance the sensors’ sensitivity a tapered no-core fiber is coated with an RH-sensitive material. The material and geometrical parameters of the interferometric structure, as well as the refractive index of the coating material, have a strong influence on sensors’ response. Various coating materials for the pure silica and d-PMMA fibers are investigated, including agarose, porous silica, and SiO\(_2\) nanoparticles. When the tapered section has no extension, the d-PMMA fiber with agarose coating presents the highest average sensitivity of 533.46 pm/%RH in the 0% to 60% RH range. Furthermore, variations in the structure’s dimensions are investigated, demonstrating that we can tune the sensitivity based on the taper extension length and radius. An extension of the tapered section up to 4000 \(\upmu \hbox {m}\) gives an improvement in the average sensitivity to 1,214.9 pm/%RH. Moreover, a reduction of the tapered radius from 15 to 1.5 \(\upmu \hbox {m}\) gives a rise in the sensitivity to 1,575.7 pm/%RH.
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Data Availability
The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
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The authors would like to thank the Brazilian Funding Agencies (CNPq and CAPES) for the partial support to this work.
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The authors declare that this work was partially supported by the Brazilian Funding Agencies (CNPq and CAPES).
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“All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation and data collection were implemented by Pedro Vitor Taranto de Carvalho, the analysis was performed by all authors. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Pedro Vitor Taranto de Carvalho and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
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de Carvalho, P.V.T., Martinez, M.A.G. & Giraldi, M.T.R. Performance analysis of humidity high-sensitivity tapered optical fiber sensor. Opt Quant Electron 54, 537 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-022-03952-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-022-03952-w