Tapered optical fibres for sensing

摘要

Recently, optical fibre tapers have intensively been investigated for many applications e.g. in telecommunications, medicine and (bio-) chemical sensing. The paper deals with enhancement of evanescent-field sensitivity of the solid-core microstructured fibre with steering-wheel air-cladding. Enhancement of a performance of the microstructured fibre is based on reduction of fibre core diameter down to narrow filament by tapering thereby defined part of light power is guided by an evanescent wave traveling in axial cladding air holes. The original fibre structure with outer diameter of 125 μm was reduced 2×, 2.5×, 3.33×, and 4× for increasing relatively small intensity overlap of guided core mode at wavelength of 1.55 μm with axial air holes. The inner structures of tapered microstructured fibre with steering-wheel air-cladding were numerically analyzed and mode intensity distributions were calculated using the FDTD technique. Analyzed fiber tapers were prepared by constructed fibre puller employing 'flame brush technique'.