Design and fabrication of mechanochromic photonic crystals as strain sensor

A. Chiappini; A. Piotrowska; M. Marciniak; M. Ferrari; D. Zonta

doi:10.1117/12.2086281

3 April 2015 Design and fabrication of mechanochromic photonic crystals as strain sensor

A. Chiappini, A. Piotrowska, M. Marciniak, M. Ferrari, D. Zonta

Proceedings Volume 9435, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2015; 94350J (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2086281
Event: SPIE Smart Structures and Materials + Nondestructive Evaluation and Health Monitoring, 2015, San Diego, California, United States

Abstract

A photonic crystal (PhC) is a periodic structure with periodicity comparable with the wavelength of light, having a photonic band gap in the visible range. In this contribution we discuss the possible use of PhCs as strain sensors, based on the observation that a distortion in the crystal structure produces a change in the reflected bandwidth. First, we demonstrate the feasible fabrication of a PhC having sub-micrometric polystyrene colloidal spheres in a PDMS matrix on a rubber substrate, and we demonstrate that the photonic properties change with substrate elongation according to theoretical prediction. The crystal sensitivity to strain depends directly on interplanar spacing and on Poisson’s ratio. To enhance the crystal strain resolution, we propose to fabricate inverse photonic crystals with FCC structure, which are known from the literature to exhibit a high negative Poisson's ratio. We carried out a theoretical investigation to predict the opto-mechanical response of inverse PhCs, and carried out preliminary tests to demonstrate their fabrication feasibility.

Citation Download Citation

A. Chiappini, A. Piotrowska, M. Marciniak, M. Ferrari, and D. Zonta "Design and fabrication of mechanochromic photonic crystals as strain sensor", Proc. SPIE 9435, Sensors and Smart Structures Technologies for Civil, Mechanical, and Aerospace Systems 2015, 94350J (3 April 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2086281

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