Abstract
An all-fiber sensitivity-enhanced refractive index (RI) balloon-like interferometer based on a tapered single-mode fiber (SMF) is proposed and experimentally investigated. The tapered fiber is designed into a balloon-like shape to form a modal interferometer which is sensitive to external environmental RI solutions. Compared with the untapered-SMF-based modal interferometer with an optimal sensitivity of 187.73 nm/RIU which also has been investigated in this paper, the tapered-SMF-based balloon-like interferometer has an improvement in RI sensitivity. Further, a serial of balloon-like interferometers based on tapered fiber with different bending radii are fabricated to explore the RI sensitivity properties on account of bending. Experimental results show that by bending the tapered-SMF-based balloon-like interferometer, the RI sensitivity has been enhanced further, and a higher sensitivity of 404.9 nm/RIU is achieved, which exhibits great potential in areas related in RI sensing.
© 2016 IEEE
PDF Article
More Like This
Cited By
You do not have subscription access to this journal. Cited by links are available to subscribers only. You may subscribe either as an Optica member, or as an authorized user of your institution.
Contact your librarian or system administrator
or
Login to access Optica Member Subscription