Ultrasensitive measurement of tactile force based on a PDMS-embedded microfiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer

Abstract

This study investigates the utilization of an in-fiber interferometer embedded in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) to develop a highly sensitive tactile sensor. The tapered mode-field mismatch structure is more conducive to stimulating strong high order modes to promote the sensitivity of the sensor. Experimental investigations are conducted to study the sensing performance of the sensor, resulting in a sensitivity of 23.636 nm/N and a detection limit of 0.746 mN. The experiments demonstrate that employing fast Fourier transform (FFT) and inverse FFT (IFFT) methods to filter weak high order modes significantly improves the repeatability of the sensor, resulting in a repeatability error of less than 1%.