Ultra-sensitive optical fiber ethanol gas sensor based on Vernier effect in cascaded Mach-Zehnder interferometer and Sagnac interferometer

Optical fiber-based sensors, which show the merits of high sensitivity, real-time, and rapid detection, have important research value in the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this paper, a novel ethanol gas sensor was experimentally investigated based on the cascaded optical fiber-based Sagnac interferometer and Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The Sagnac interferometer was constructed with an anisotropic nematic liquid crystal (NLC) film which acted as the reactor with ethanol gas. A tapered single-mode fiber (SMF) was used to build the Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI). The two interferometers were parallelly and tandemly cascaded respectively to achieve the magnification of measurement sensitivity. Experimental results showed that the sensitivities were 8.561 pm/ppm with a magnification factor of 3.76 for the parallel cascaded structure and 7.924 pm/ppm with a magnification factor of 3.48 for the tandemly cascaded structure. The designed optical fiber-based ethanol gas sensor, showing the advantages of compact structure, high sensitivity, small size, and low cost, could be a competitive candidate for the detection of ethanol gas leakage.