We propose and experimentally demonstrate a simple fabrication and high sensitivity Fabry-Perot interferometer polymer (FPIP)-coated temperature sensor based on Fresnel reflection. The single mode fiber end-face was coated with a polycarbonate (PC) or poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) thermosensitive polymer. The experimental results indicate that the FPIP sensor coated with PMMA exhibits the average temperature sensitivities of 312.5 and 257.0 pm °C−1 for the thicknesses of 5.2 and 6.5 μm, respectively, in the temperature range of 26 °C-80 °C. Meanwhile, the FPIP sensor coated with PC exhibits the average temperature sensitivities of 245.4 and 103.6 pm °C−1 for the thicknesses of 4.9 and 9.9 μm, respectively, in the temperature range of 26 °C-140 °C. The FPIP sensor coated with PC indicates a relatively low sensitivity compared to PMMA coated sensor. However, the available operating temperature range for PC sensor is larger than PMMA.
We designed simply fabricated, highly sensitive, and cost-effective dual-polymer-coated Fabry–Perot interferometer (DFPI)-based temperature sensors by employing thermosensitive polymers and non-thermosensitive polymers, as well as different two successive dip-coating techniques (stepwise dip coating and polymer mixture coating). Seven sensors were fabricated using different polymer combinations for performance optimization. The experiments demonstrated that the stepwise dip-coated dual thermosensitive polymer sensors exhibited the highest sensitivity (2142.5 pm °C−1 for poly(methyl methacrylate)-polycarbonate (PMMA_PC) and 785.5 pm °C−1 for poly(methyl methacrylate)- polystyrene (PMMA_PS)). Conversely, the polymer-mixture-coated sensors yielded low sensitivities (339.5 pm °C−1 for the poly(methyl methacrylate)-polycarbonate mixture (PMMA_PC mixture) and 233.5 pm °C−1 for the poly(methyl methacrylate)-polystyrene mixture (PMMA_PS mixture). Thus, the coating method, polymer selection, and thin air-bubble-free coating are crucial for high-sensitivity DFPI-based sensors. Furthermore, the DFPI-based sensors yielded stable readouts, based on three measurements. Our comprehensive results confirm the effectiveness, reproducibility, stability, fast response, feasibility, and accuracy of temperature measurements using the proposed sensors. The excellent performance and simplicity of our proposed sensors are promising for biomedical, biochemical, and physical applications.
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.
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