Optical Sensors Based on Plastic Fibers

Abstract

The recent advances of polymer technology allowed the introduction of plastic optical fiber in sensor design. The advantages of optical metrology with plastic optical fiber have attracted the attention of the scientific community, as they allow the development of low-cost or cost competitive systems compared with conventional technologies. In this paper, the current state of the art of plastic optical fiber technology will be reviewed, namely its main characteristics and sensing advantages. Several measurement techniques will be described, with a strong focus on interrogation approaches based on intensity variation in transmission and reflection. The potential applications involving structural health monitoring, medicine, environment and the biological and chemical area are also presented.

Compensation technique for environmental and light source power variations applied in a polymer optical fiber curvature sensor for wearable devices

“…POFs are compact, lightweight, allow multiplexing systems and are not influenced by magnetic fields (Bilro et al, 2012). Moreover, the polymer higher strain limits and fracture toughness enable the fiber bent in angles with the same order of magnitude of the human joints range of movement (Peters, 2011).…”

“…Different operation principles for POF sensors have been proposed throughout the years such as light coupling based sensors (Antunes et al, 2013;Zawawi et al, 2013), specklegrams (Rodriguez-Cobo et al, 2013), Fiber Bragg Gratings (Marques et al, 2015) and intensity variation detection (Bilro et al, 2011). Among them, intensity variation is one of the most commonly used principles for joint angle measurement due to its ease of implementation, good price-quality ratio, and simplicity in signal processing (Bilro et al, 2012).…”

Energy conversion in 7-(Diethylamino)coumarin doped PMMA fluorescent fibre

“…The organic dyes can be incorporated in optical fibers based on thermoplastic polymers due to low drawing temperatures (much lower than used in optical glass technology). In fact, the poly(methyl methacrylate) is the most frequently used polymer for optical applications (Miluski et al 2015b;Bilro et al 2012). High transparency and well-developed processing technology of PMMA make it a good candidate for low-cost optical components and optical fibres fabrication (Miluski et al 2016a, b).…”

Luminescent Properties of Oxazine 170 Perchlorate Doped PMMA Fiber

“…In fact, high signal attenuation limits the polymeric optical fiber (POF) applications to short distance communication, compact light sources and optical sensors [5,6]. There are reported numerous constructions of POFs based optical sensors for liquids and gasses monitoring [7][8][9][10]. In addition, the possibility of incorporation of luminescent dopants significantly extends the application field of optical fiber devices [11][12][13][14][15].…”

“…Moreover, the using of much thicker fibers (significantly higher flexibility of polymeric materials) allows easy and efficient connection to light sources and detectors and makes it proper solution for inexpensive data transmission applications and sensors [7]. There are reported several constructions of POFs fibers: well-known core-cladding (step and gradient index profile) and sophisticated (single-mode, non-linear, photonic band gap, and microstructured) polymer optical fibers [16][17][18][19][20][21].…”