Femtosecond laser micromachining of fibre Bragg gratings for simultaneous measurement of temperature and concentration of liquids

This paper is concerned with micromachining of optical fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) using a femtosecond pulsed laser. The purpose of this work is to increase the sensitivity of FBGs for simultaneous monitoring of the concentration of chemicals and biological liquids and their temperature. A Ti : sapphire regenerative amplifier was utilized to inscribe micro-grooves with widths of 16 and 22 mu m in the cladding of the optical fibres. Due to the core-confined light propagation characteristics of FBGs, their sensitivity to the changes in the index of refraction of the surrounding medium is minimal. However, by creating micro-grooves in the cladding layer, the index of refraction of the surrounding medium becomes effective in the coupling of the propagating core modes. As the index of refraction of liquids depends on the composition and concentration, the FBG with micromachined cladding can provide enough sensitivity to be used in chemical sensing. The performance of the micromachined FBGs was investigated by immersing them in different liquid solutions of polyvinyl butyral (PVB) in ethanol and obtaining their thermal responses. Results showed that the optical response of the micromachined FBGs (i.e. red shift in Bragg wavelength) is different by up to 10% in PVB solutions in ethanol than in ethanol alone. The micromachined FBGs can be used to monitor the concentration as well as the temperature of a solution.