Investigation of Vibration and Sensing of Chalcogenide Microfiber Integrated with Hollow-core Fiber

Abstract

We propose and investigate a fiber-optic sensor of As₂Se₃ chalcogenide (ChG) microfiber laterally adhered on the hollow-core fiber (HCF) end face. HCF is fused with a single-mode fiber to form Fabry–Perot interferometer (FPI) between single-mode fiber (SMF) end face and ChG microfiber. ChG microfiber is ultra-sensitive to the small perturbations in the surroundings, because of its high refractive index and small Young’s modulus. Furthermore, relative to traditional fiber-optic FPI comprised by thin film, our proposed FPI with thin-diameter ChG microfiber could respond to mechanical vibrations over a broad range of frequencies. Based on finite-element simulation, ChG microfiber has ultra-broadband dynamic frequency response, up to several hundreds of megahertz accompanied by a very small response strength decay, in comparison to the frequency response of ChG film which is typically less than 30 MHz. ChG microfiber-based FPI is also used in the static refractometric sensing with sensitivity of 1563 nm/RIU. Such a novel fiber-optic sensor offers excellent potential for the nondestructive detection and advanced biomedical sensing.