Highly birefringent side-hole fiber Bragg grating for high-temperature pressure sensing

Abstract

We demonstrate a novel, to the best of our knowledge, high-temperature pressure sensor based on a highly birefringent fiber Bragg grating (Hi-Bi FBG) fabricated in a dual side-hole fiber (DSHF). The Hi-Bi FBG is generated by a femtosecond laser directly written sawtooth structure in the DSHF cladding along the fiber core through the slow axis (i.e., the direction perpendicular to the dual-hole axis). The sawtooth structure serves as an in-fiber stressor and also generates Bragg resonance due to its periodicity. The DSHF was etched by hydrofluoric acid to increase its pressure sensitivity, and the diameter of two air holes was enlarged from 38.2 to 49.6 µm. A Hi-Bi FBG with a birefringence of up to 1.8 × 10−3 was successfully created in the etched DSHF. Two distinct reflection peaks could be observed by using a commercial FBG interrogator. Moreover, pressure measurement from 0 to 3 MPa at a high temperature of 700°C was conducted by monitoring the birefringence-induced peak splits and achieved a high-pressure sensitivity of −21.2 pm/MPa. The discrimination of the temperature and pressure could be realized by simultaneously measuring the Bragg wavelength shifts and peak splits. Furthermore, a wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) Hi-Bi FBG array was also constructed in the DSHF and was used for quasi-distributed high-pressure sensing up to 3 MPa. As such, the proposed femtosecond laser-inscribed Hi-Bi FBG is a promising tool for high-temperature pressure sensing in harsh environments, such as aerospace vehicles, nuclear reactors, and petrochemical industries.