Open AccessHighly Sensitive Fiber Taper Interferometric Hydrogen Sensors
Author(s) -
Zhipeng Yu,
Long Jin,
Lipeng Sun,
Jie Li,
Yang Ran,
Bai-Ou Guan
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
ieee photonics journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.725
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1943-0655
pISSN - 1943-0647
DOI - 10.1109/jphot.2015.2507369
Subject(s) - engineered materials, dielectrics and plasmas , photonics and electrooptics
We report on the implementation of fiber taper interferometric hydrogen sensors with high sensitivity and good reproducibility. The tapering process is carried out with a commercial fusion splicer by precisely controlling the pulling and feeding velocities, as well as arc strength. The taper can naturally act as a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and intrinsically offers a transmission spectrum with periodic interference fringes. The sensor with a waist diameter of 3.0 μm can present a spectral shift up to -1.99 nm when injecting hydrogen with a concentration of 5% as a result of strong evanescent field interaction with the Palladium overlay. We have fabricated a number of sensors with identical parameters and found that the relative error ratio in waist diameter is less than 6% and that in hydrogen response is 4.2%.