The exploration of novel polymers for temperature sensing with high sensitivity has attracted tremendous research interest. Hence, we report a polystyrene-coated optical fiber temperature sensor with high sensitivity. To enhance the temperature sensitivity, flat, thin, smooth, and air bubble-free polystyrene was coated on the edge surface of a single-mode optical fiber, where the coating thickness was varied based on the solution concentration. Three thicknesses of the polystyrene layer were obtained as 2.0, 4.1, and 8.0 μm. The temperature sensor with 2.0 μm thick polystyrene exhibited the highest temperature sensitivity of 439.89 pm °C-1 in the temperature range of 25-100 °C. This could be attributed to the very uniform and thin coating of polystyrene, along with the reasonable coefficient of thermal expansion and thermo-optic coefficient of polystyrene. Overall, the experimental results proved the effectiveness of the proposed polystyrene-coated temperature sensor for accurate temperature measurement.
Keywords: Fresnel reflection; polystyrene; single-mode fiber; temperature sensitivity.