Drastic sensitivity enhancement of temperature sensing based on modal interference in plastic optical fibers

G. Numata; N. Hayashi; M. Tabaru; Y. Mizuno; K. Nakamura

doi:10.1117/12.2194065

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28 September 2015 Drastic sensitivity enhancement of temperature sensing based on modal interference in plastic optical fibers

G. Numata, N. Hayashi, M. Tabaru, Y. Mizuno, K. Nakamura

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Proceedings Volume 9634, 24th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors; 96341R (2015) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2194065
Event: International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors (OFS24), 2015, Curitiba, Brazil

Abstract

It has been reported that temperature sensors based on modal interference in perfluorinated graded-index (GI) plastic optical fibers (POFs) show the world’s highest temperature sensitivity of +49.8 nm/°C/m at 1300 nm at room temperature, which is over 1800 times the value in silica multimode fibers (MMFs). In this work, we newly find that the temperature sensitivity (absolute value) is significantly enhanced with increasing temperature toward ~70°C, which is close to the glass-transition temperature of the core polymer. When the core diameter is 62.5 μm, the sensitivity at 72 °C at 1300 nm is +202 nm/°C/m, which is approximately 26 times the value obtained at room temperature and even over 7000 times the highest value previously reported using a silica MMF. As the glass-transition temperature of polymers can be generally set to an arbitrary value, this characteristic could be used to develop POF-based temperature sensors with ultra-high sensitivity not only at ~70°C but at arbitrary temperature in future.

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G. Numata, N. Hayashi, M. Tabaru, Y. Mizuno, and K. Nakamura "Drastic sensitivity enhancement of temperature sensing based on modal interference in plastic optical fibers", Proc. SPIE 9634, 24th International Conference on Optical Fibre Sensors, 96341R (28 September 2015); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2194065

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