Description
The widespread deployment of advanced optical fiber sensors is frequently bottlenecked by fabrication methods that are time-consuming, costly, reliant on hazardous chemicals, or restrictively complex. This study demonstrates a rapid, chemical-free, and highly reproduceable approach for the direct writing of micro-structured fiber sensors using a 266 nm nanosecond UV-laser micromachining platform.
Highlighting the versatility of the proposed computer-controlled technique, it is possible to realize sensing architectures in both single-mode fiber (SMF) and multimode fiber (MMF). To assess the proposal we present respectively a 200 µm long transverse air cavity with a depth of 67 µm in the SMF-28 yielding a stable interferometric spectrum with high fringe visibility in the near-infrared region and with a depth of 35 µm in the MMF enabling direct core exposure yielding to a surrounding refractive index (SRI) sensor.
These results validate nanosecond UV-laser micromachining as a scalable and highly adaptable methodology for the rapid prototyping of robust physical and biochemical sensors.
