Highly Sensitive Sensors Based on Photonic Crystal Fiber Modal Interferometers.pdfVIP

Hindawi Publishing Corporation Journal of Sensors Volume 2009, Article ID 747803, 11 pages doi:10.1155/2009/747803 Review Article Highly Sensitive Sensors Based on Photonic Crystal Fiber Modal Interferometers Joel Villatoro,1 Vittoria Finazzi,1 Gonc¸al Badenes,1 and Valerio Pruneri1, 2 1 Institut de Ciencies Fotoniques (ICFO), Mediterranean Technology Park, Castelldefels, 08860 Barcelona, Spain 2 Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avanc¸ats (ICREA), 08010 Barcelona, Spain ´ Correspondence should be addressed to Joel Villatoro, joel.villatoro@icfo.es Received 23 March 2009; Accepted 19 May 2009 Recommended by Christos Riziotis We review the research on photonic crystal fiber modal interferometers with emphasis placed on the characteristics that make them attractive for different sensing applications. The fabrication of such interferometers is carried out with different post-processing techniques such as grating inscription, tapering or cleaving, and splicing. In general photonic crystal fiber interferometers exhibit low thermal sensitivity while their applications range from sensing strain or temperature to refractive index and volatile organic compounds. Copyright © 2009 Joel Villatoro et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 1. Introduction same path, the susceptibility to environmental fluctuations is reduced. In addition, one requires controlling only two Optical interferometers have played an important role in or more modes. The compactn