Abstract
An S-tapered fiber sensor has been realized on the common single-mode
fiber by a fusion splicer. The S fiber taper (SFT) can be considered as a
compact fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer with the total length of hundreds
of microns. The spectral characteristics of the SFTs with different structure
parameters including axial offsets and taper waist diameters have been studied.
Sensing experiments have also been carried out to test their response to refractive
index (RI) and axial strain. The SFT with an axial offset of 114 μm and a taper
waist diameter of 54.6 μm exhibits the best combination property. Its RI sensitivity reaches
as high as 2066 nm/RI unit in the RI range of 1.407–1.421 and the average
strain sensitivity is -183.4 pm/με, which is the highest strain sensitivity, to the best of our knowledge,
with one or two orders of magnitude larger than the existing fiber strain
sensors.
© 2012 IEEE
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