Picosecond laser machining of fiber based sensing devices

In this paper we demonstrate the feasibility of picosecond laser machining for the manufacture of fibre based sensing devices. Many process have shown great success in machining fused silica fibres, however, most of these involve several steps such as laser machining and etching or are based on very time consuming processes such as Focussed Ion Beam (FIB) machining. These disadvantages have limited the widespread adaptation of such fibre based sensors since the manufacturing costs are high. Here we present the manufacturing of a mechanical sensor structure onto the end of a conventional telecoms single mode optical fibre with an outer diameter of 125 microns. The process shows promise towards a lower cost manufacturing route for such devices. The sensors produced are based on cantilever structurescarved into the end of the fibre with an optical readout of the cantilever position by in-fibre interferometry.