A Micro Bubble Structure Based Fabry-Perot Optical Fiber Strain Sensor with High Sensitivity and Low-Cost Characteristics

Lu Yan; Zhiguo Gui; Guanjun Wang; Yongquan An; Jinyu Gu; Meiqin Zhang; Xinglin Liu; Zhibin Wang; Gao Wang; Pinggang Jia

doi:10.3390/s17030555

A Micro Bubble Structure Based Fabry-Perot Optical Fiber Strain Sensor with High Sensitivity and Low-Cost Characteristics

Sensors (Basel). 2017 Mar 9;17(3):555. doi: 10.3390/s17030555.

Authors

Lu Yan¹, Zhiguo Gui², Guanjun Wang³, Yongquan An⁴, Jinyu Gu⁵, Meiqin Zhang⁶, Xinglin Liu⁷, Zhibin Wang⁸, Gao Wang⁹, Pinggang Jia¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. S1505018@st.nuc.edu.cn.
² School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. guizhiguo@nuc.edu.cn.
³ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. wanggunjun@nuc.edu.cn.
⁴ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. anyongquan107@hotmail.com.
⁵ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. S1505032@st.nuc.edu.cn.
⁶ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. S1505016@st.nuc.edu.cn.
⁷ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. S1505033@st.nuc.edu.cn.
⁸ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. wangzhibin@nuc.edu.cn.
⁹ School of Information and Communication Engineering, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. wanggao@nuc.edu.cn.
¹⁰ School of Instrument and Electronics, North University of China, Taiyuan 030051, China. pgjia@nuc.edu.cn.

Abstract

A high-sensitivity, low-cost, ultrathin, hollow fiber micro bubble structure was proposed; such a bubble can be used to develop a high-sensitivity strain sensor based on a Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI). The micro bubble is fabricated at the fiber tip by splicing a glass tube to a single mode fiber (SMF) and then the glass tube is filled with gas in order to expand and form a micro bubble. The sensitivity of the strain sensor with a cavity length of about 155 μm and a bubble wall thickness of about 6 μm was measured to be up to 8.14 pm/μϵ.

Keywords: Fabry–Perot; optical fiber sensor; strain measurement.