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Fiber optic refractive index sensor

based on tapered thin core fiber

Ben Khalifa, Ameni, Ben Salem, Amine, Cherif, Rim

Ameni Ben Khalifa, Amine Ben Salem, Rim Cherif, "Fiber optic refractive
index sensor based on tapered thin core fiber," Proc. SPIE 10382, Photonic
Fiber and Crystal Devices: Advances in Materials and Innovations in Device
Applications XI, 103820D (23 August 2017); doi: 10.1117/12.2273815

Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2017, San Diego, California,

United States

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 Fiber-optic refractive index sensor based on tapered thin core fiber
Ameni Ben Khalifa*, Amine Ben Salem and Rim Cherif
University of Carthage, Engineering School of Communication of Tunis (SUP’COM), GRESCOM
Laboratory, Ghazala Technopark, 2083, Ariana, Tunisia

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we propose the design of fiber optic refractive index sensor based on a thin core fiber, sandwiched between
an input and output single mode fibers. This structure is characterized by a refractive index sensitivity about 187.98
nm/RIU (refractive index unit). In order to enhance the sensitivity, we designed a tapered single mode-thin core-single
mode fiber structure where the sensitivity with different waist-diameters (90, 60 and 30 µm) is investigated. As a result,
we obtained an ultra-high sensitivity of the tapered sensor about 783.19 nm/RIU in the refractive index range of 1.3346-
1.3899, using sucrose and water mixture solution, achieved for a waist diameter equal to 30 µm and a taper length of
675µm.The designed structure presents the merits of high sensitivity which is 4 times higher than that of the thin core
fiber modal interferometer which makes it an excellent candidate for biochemical sensing applications.
Keywords: Optical fiber sensor, thin core fiber, refractive index sensing, tapered fiber.

1. INTRODUCTION
Fiber-optic refractive index sensors have received a considerable attention due to their advantages of compactness and
immunity to electromagnetic interference. To implement refractive index sensing, several structures are adopted such as
fiber Bragg gratings [1], specialty fibers [2] and long period grating [3]. Moreover, fiber modal interferometers are
preferred because they have many advantages such as simple structure, low cost and high sensitivity. Recently, sensor
composed of single mode-thin core-single mode fiber structure has attracted more research attention when it is compared
with single mode-multimode-single mode fiber structure due to its additional advantages such as sharper filter
bandwidth, lower transmission loss and better resolution. This fiber modal interferometer can be used for sensing
different parameters such as strain [4], liquid level [5], humidity [6], pH [7], and temperature [8]. This structure can be
considered for refractive index sensing which is characterized by a relatively high sensitivity to the change of external
refractive index (135 nm/RIU) [9]. In order to enhance the sensitivity to refractive index, there are many suggested
solutions such as using a sensor structure composed of thin core-single mode-thin core fiber which is characterized by a
sensitivity about 159 nm/RIU for water-based solutions [10]. In addition, another solution can be used by etching the
cladding of the thin core fiber (TCF) [11]. Using the etching technique, a sensitivity of 511.74 nm/RIU is obtained [11].
However, the fabrication difficulty and operation risk are increased because this method is accomplished using chemical
compounds which may induce a significant discrepancy between the experimental and numerical results due to the
surface roughness induced by chemical etching. Furthermore, due to the improvement in the taper fabrication
technology, tapered fibers have potential applications such as high resolution sensing [12], microscope particle trapping
[13], high-order mode filtering [14] and evanescent coupling to planar waveguide or micro-resonators [15].
In this paper, an improved structure for higher refractive index sensitivity is presented which is formed by splicing a
tapered thin-core fiber between two sections of single mode fibers. It is the first time that an ultra-high sensitivity of
783.19 nm/RIU is obtained for a tapered single mode-thin core-single mode refractive index sensor. Moreover, we
investigate the sensitivity of both the thin core fiber modal interferometer and the tapered one with different waist
diameter. The designed structure is characterized by high sensitivity which is 4 times higher than that of the structure
without tapering.
The rest of this paper is structured as follows: in section 2, we introduce the theoretical modeling of the refractive index
sensor composed of single mode-thin core-single mode fibers (SMFs). In section 3, we present different structures based
on thin and tapered core fiber modal interferometers. Then, we show the spectra of the wavelength shift as a function of
refractive index of the surrounding medium for different waist diameter and the calculated sensitivity of different
structure. Finally, section 4 concludes the paper.
*
amani.benkhalifa@supcom.tn; phone +216 71 857 000; fax +216 71 856 829; www.supcom.tn

Photonic Fiber and Crystal Devices: Advances in Materials and Innovations in Device Applications XI,
edited by Shizhuo Yin, Ruyan Guo, Proc. of SPIE Vol. 10382, 103820D · © 2017 SPIE
CCC code: 0277-786X/17/$18 · doi: 10.1117/12.2273815

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 2. THEORETICAL ANALYSIS
The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance in terms of sensitivity of two different modal interferometers
composed of thin and tapered thin core fibers as depicted by figure 1 (a) and (b), respectively. The basic sensor structure
consists of thin core fiber where it is sandwiched between two sections of single mode fiber. In the first interface, a part
of the core guided mode is coupled into the cladding of thin core fiber due to the mismatched fiber core cross-sectional.
At the second boundary, the cladding modes are coupled with the original core mode and it generates the interference
signal. This structure is defined as an interferometer assembled with two arms where the first one is passed through core
mode, and the second one through cladding mode.
When the light reaches the first hetero-core interface, the high-order cladding modes will be excited. They will interfere
with the core mode at the second hetero-core interface due to the existing optical path difference between the two
interference modes. The constructive or destructive interference will determine the peak or dip in the output transmission
spectrum. The refractive index of the surrounding medium affects the interference signal because the effective index of
the cladding modes is comprised between the refractive index of the cladding and that of the surrounding medium. As a
result, this structure can be exploited for refractive index sensing.
The interference between the cladding modes and the core modes is due to the phase difference which is expressed as
follows [16]:

2π ⎛⎜ ncore − ncl , j ⎞⎟ L
eff eff eff
2πΔn j L
⎝ ⎠
Φj = = (1)
λ λ
eff eff
where λ is the wavelength and L is the thin core fiber length. The parameter ncore , ncl , j are the effective refractive
eff
index of the core and jth cladding modes, respectively, and Δn j is the difference between them.
The intensity of the interference signal I is defined as follows:
I = I1 + I 2 + 2 I1 I 2 cos φ j ( ) (2)

where I1 and I 2 present the intensity of lights in the core and the cladding fiber, respectively.
For a specific spectrum dip resulting from the destructive interference, Φ becomes an odd times of π , one can write the
equation (1) as:

2π ⎛⎜ n core − n cl , j ⎞⎟ L
eff eff eff
2πΔn j L
⎝ ⎠
Φj = = = (2k + 1)π
λD λD
eff
2 Δn j L
λD = (3)
2k + 1

where λD is the characteristic wavelength of transmission dip and k is an integer. When the surrounding refractive index
changes, the effective refractive index of the cladding mode changes and the characteristic wavelength shifts. As a result,
we can measure the surrounding refractive index by monitoring the characteristic wavelength shift.

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The schematic diagram of thin core fiber modal interferometer is shown in figure 1 (a). The proposed sensor is composed
of thin core fiber sandwiched between two sections of single mode fiber. The sensing region is composed of thin core
fiber.

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 CI999!uß WC

CI999!uß WC

Figure 1. Schematic diagram of the refractive index sensor based on (a) thin core fiber and (b) tapered thin core fiber
The parameters of the single mode fiber and thin core fiber used in our simulations are presented in Table 1.

Table 1. The parameters used in simulations.

SMF TCF
Diameter of cladding (µm) 125 125
Refractive index of cladding 1.4450 1.4584
Diameter of core (µm) 8.2 3
Refractive index of core 1.4502 1.4641

For initial analysis, we aim to show that the sensitivity to refractive index of surrounding medium is independent to
length change of sensing region. However Eq. (3) shows that the characteristic wavelength varies with both length of the
thin core fiber and the effective index change of core cladding modes. We find that the length of the sensing region has
no important impact on either the characteristic wavelength shift or the sensitivity of the refractive index sensor which is
demonstrated by our simulation as seen in figure 2.

L=20mm
12
L=40mm
L=80mm
10 Fitting curve
Wavelength shift (nm)

1,33 1,34 1,35 1,36 1,37 1,38 1,39

Refractive index

Figure 2. Characteristic wavelength shift of the thin core fiber modal interferometer as a function of the surrounding refractive index
as a function of different length (L).

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 As shown in figure 2, when varying the length of the thin core fiber, we confirm that there is no impact of the length. In
order to ensure the existence of distinct peaks and dips in a specified wavelength range of the interference spectrum, we
have to choose a longer thin core fiber. However, longer length of the sensing region will make it difficult to make a
compact sensor which will limit its application in some special fields. As the length of thin core fiber will not influence
the sensor’s sensitivity, as shown in figure 2, we select it about 20 mm (corresponding a propagating distance of 36 mm).
Figure 3 shows the transmission spectrum of thin core fiber modal interferometer. The transmission spectrum presents
many dips in the wavelength range of 1500–1600 nm. The dip shown in figure 3 is localized at the wavelength of 1547
nm for a refractive index 1.3346. This dip is used as the characteristic wavelength and it is considered to measure the
spectrum shift for refractive index sensing.
0.97

n=1.3346
n=1.3400
n=1.3448

Dip
09 1 , 1 1 1 . 1 1 1 1 1

1 50 1.51 1.52 1.53 1.54 1.55 1.56 1.57 1.58 1.59 160
Wavelengh (µm)

Figure 3: The transmission spectrum of the thin core fiber modal interferometer with different surrounding medium refractive index.
Several mixtures of sucrose solution were considered with different concentration [1.381, 5.123, 8.425, 11.817, 14.821,
18.033, 21.136, 24.242, 26.901, 29.577, 32.432 and 35.065 (mass%)] for refractive index sensing. Their corresponding
refractive index are 1.3346, 1.3400, 1.3448, 1.35, 1.3547, 1.3599, 1.3651, 1.3704, 1.3750, 1.3798, 1.385 and 1.3899
respectively [17]. We extract the dip points presented in figure 3 and we present its wavelength shift with different
surrounding refractive index in figure 4.

12

10 Simulation results
y=187.98*x-251.27
Wavelength shift (nm)

1,34 1,35 1,36 1,37 1,38 1,39

Refractive index

Figure 4. Characteristic wavelength shift of the thin core fiber modal interferometer as a function of the surrounding refractive index.

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 As shown in figure 4, it is clear that the wavelength shift is about 11 nm when the surrounding refractive index changes
as the above values and it has a good linear relationship with the refractive index. A sensitivity of 187.98 nm/RIU
(refractive index unit) is obtained in this refractive index range.
In order to enhance the sensitivity of this sensor, we consider a tapered structure which consists of an input single mode
fiber, a tapered thin core fiber and an output single mode fiber, as shown in figure 1 (b). We design the taper in the thin
core fiber, as shown in figure 5, where we assume a linear transformation by connecting the two spaces with straight
lines representing the taper. In figure 5, the parameters a, b present the width of the input and output thin core fiber
respectively. The length of the taper is taken to be l. Mathematical expression presenting the taper is defined in figure 5.
The coordinates in the transformed space are presented by x’, y’ and z’ where x, y and z are those in the initial space
[18].

x l ⎧ ' x⎛b−a ⎞
⎪x = a ⎜ l * z + a ⎟
⎪ ⎝ ⎠
⎪ '
b ⎨y = y
a z ⎪z ' = z
⎪
⎪⎩

Figure 5. Linear transformed taper with transformation formulation.

The power in the evanescent field, as sensitivity to the surrounding refractive index, in the untapered structure is very
low. In the tapered thin core fiber section, the propagated light has a significant fraction of power travelling in the
evanescent wave. So, the excited core modes will be partly coupled to the high-order cladding modes at the beginning of
the fiber taper region where the effective index of these guided modes is greatly affected by refractive index of the
surrounding medium. We study the transmission spectra response of the tapered structure to the change of the
surrounding refractive index with different waist diameter, 90, 60, and 30 µm and with a tapering length about 675 µm.
We present in figure 6 the characteristic wavelength shift as a function of surrounding refractive index for different waist
diameter of thin core fiber. We can clearly see that the characteristic wavelength shift is much larger as the waist
diameter decreases.

40 D=90µm
D=60µm
D=30µm
y=238.71*x-319.64
Wavelength shift (nm)

30 y=357.76*x-479.09
y=783.19*x-1048.8

20

10

1,33 1,34 1,35 1,36 1,37 1,38 1,39

Refractive index

Figure 6. Characteristic wavelength shift of the sensor with different waist diameters (D) of the thin core fiber.

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 When comparing the sensitivity to the surrounding refractive index, we can conclude that the sensitivity is increased by
decreasing the waist diameter of the tapered thin core fiber. For a waist diameter about 90 µm, the sensitivity of the
sensor is about 238.71 nm/RIU which is higher than the thin core fiber structure. When we continue to decrease the waist
diameter to 60 µm, we find a sensitivity of 357.76 nm/RIU. Finally, a high sensitivity of 783.19 nm/RIU is obtained for a
waist diameter equal to 30 µm and a tapered length equal to 675 µm. As a result, the sensitivity of the proposed structure
is found 4 times higher than that of the structure without tapering.

4. CONCLUSION
In this paper, we proposed a tapered thin core fiber modal interferometer for refractive index sensing which enhances the
sensitivity compared to the thin core fiber modal interferometer. We studied the sensitivity to the surrounding medium
with different waist-diameters (90, 60 and 30 µm). The sensitivity of the tapered sensor is about 783.19 nm/RIU in the
refractive index range of 1.3346-1.3899, achieved for a waist diameter equal to 30 µm and a taper length of 675µm,
which is 4 times higher compared to the sensitivity of the thin core fiber modal interferometer.

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