Multi-tapered polarization-maintaining fiber-optic sensor for refractive index and temperature measurements

In this paper, a fiber-optic refractive index and temperature sensor based on Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) is designed and fabricated. The sensor structure consists of a section of polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) with multi-tapers and sandwiched by two sections of multi-mode fiber (MMF). Due to the changes of ambient refractive index and temperature, the effective refractive index of the core and cladding modes of the multi-tapered PMF will be changed, which will cause the interference spectral shift of core mode and cladding mode. The series experiments show that the structure has better repeatability, the maximum refractive index sensitivity is 250.861 nm/RIU, the maximum temperature sensitivity is −78 pm/°C. As the sensitivity matrix is used to realize the two-parameter distinguishing measurement, the resolutions of 1.2 × 10−5 RIU and 0.38 °C for refractive index and temperature are achieved. The structure has superior mechanical properties, and has broad application prospects in petrochemical industry, underwater exploration and other fields.