Performance of humidity sensor based on photonic crystal fiber interferometer

Abstract

Photonic Crystal Fiber Interferometers (PCFIs) are greatly used
for sensing applications. This work presents the fabrication and
characterization of a relative humidity sensor based on Mach-
Zehnder Interferometer (MZI), which operates in reflection mode.
The humidity sensor operation based on the adsorption and
desorption of water vapour at the silica-air interface within the PCF.
The fabrication of this sensor is simple, it only includes splicing and
cleaving the PCF with SMF.PCF (LMA-10) with a certain length
spliced to SMF (Corning-28).
The spectrum of PCFI exhibits good sensitivity to humidity
variations. The PCFI response is observed for a range of humidity
values from (27% RH to 85% RH), the position of the interference
peaks is found to be shifted to longer wavelength with humidity
increasing. In this work, a different length of PCFs are used, and the
maximum humidity sensitivity of (5.86 pm / %RH) is achieved with
(4.5cm) PCF length, and the rise time of (8sec) is achieved. This
humidity sensor has distinguished features as that it does not require
the use of a hygroscopic material, robust, compact size, immunity to
electromagnetic interference, and it has potential applications for
high humidity environments.