プラスチック光ファイバ中のモード間干渉を用いた温度センシングの感度を向上させたミュンヘン工科大学との共同研究の成果が、Japanese Journal of Applied Physics に掲載されました。
K. Wang, Y. Mizuno, K. Kishizawa, Y. Toyoda, H. Lee, K. Ichige, W. Kurz, X. Dong, M. Jakobi, and A. W. Koch, “Temperature sensing based on multimode interference in polymer optical fibers: sensitivity enhancement by PC-APC connections,” Jpn. J. Appl. Phys., vol. 61, no. 11, 118001 (2022).
A simple, stable, and high-sensitivity temperature sensor based on multimode interference (MMI) in a polymer optical fiber (POF) with higher-order mode excitation is developed. In a single-mode–multimode–single-mode (SMS) structure, one of the two ends of the multimode POF with physical-contact (PC) connectors is connected to a silica single-mode fiber with an angled-PC (APC) connector to make use of higher-order propagation modes in the POF. Three configurations (no PC-APC, PC-APC at input, and PC-APC at output) are compared, and the maximal temperature sensitivity of 219.2 pm/degC, which is more than double the value of the standard (no PC-APC) SMS structure, is obtained. This result indicates that the temperature sensitivity can be stably enhanced at a low cost by the use of PC-APC connections.