ABSTRACT
Mid-infrared (mid-IR) optical fibers have long attracted great interest due to their wide range of applications in security, biology and chemical sensing. Traditionally, research was directed towards materials with low absorption in the mid-IR region, such as chalcogenides, which are difficult to manipulate and often contain highly toxic elements. In this paper, we demonstrate a Polyethylene Terephthalate Glycol (PETG) hollow-core fiber (HCF) with guiding properties in the mid-IR. Guiding is provided by the fiber geometry, as PETG exhibits a material attenuation 2 orders of magnitude larger than the HCF propagation loss. The structured plastic fiber preforms were fabricated using commercial 3D printing technology and then drawn using a conventional fiber drawing tower. The final PETG fiber outer diameter was 466 µm with a hollow-core diameter of 225 µm. Thermal imaging at the fiber facet performed within the wavelength range 3.5-5 µm clearly indicates air guidance in the fiber hollow-core.
ABSTRACT
A hydrostatic pressure sensor based on morphology dependent resonances in a polymeric tube is presented. By internal pressurization, normal tensions will increase the device's size and shrink its wall thickness, inducing a shift in the resonant wavelengths of the resonator. Numerical simulations indicate that there are two modal regimes of sensitivity and a maximum achievable sensitivity, related to the device's geometry, constitutive material and analysed mode order. A sensitivity as high as 0.36 ± 0.01 nm/bar has been experimentally found for a 1.8mm diameter PMMA tube with wall thickness of 80µm.
