Pressure Sensing in High-Refractive-Index Liquids Using Long-Period Gratings Nanocoated with Silicon Nitride 英文参考文献.docVIP

Sensors 2010, 10, 11301-11310; doi:10.3390/s101211301 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Article Pressure Sensing in High-Refractive-Index Liquids Using Long-Period Gratings Nanocoated with Silicon Nitride Mateusz Smietana 1,2,*, Wojtek J. Bock 2, Predrag Mikulic 2 and Jiahua Chen 2 1 Centre de Recherche en Photonique, Université du Québec en Outaouais, 101 rue Saint-Jean-Bosco, Gatineau, QC, J8X 3X7, Canada 2 Institute of Microelectronics and Optoelectronics, Warsaw University of Technology, Koszykowa 75, 00-662 Warsaw, Poland; E-Mails: wojtek.bock@uqo.ca (W.J.B.); predrag.mikulic@uqo.ca (P.M.); jiahua.chen@uqo.ca (J.C.) * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: M.Smietana@.pl; Tel.: +48-22-234-7932; Fax: +48-22-234-7932. Received: 8 November 2010; in revised form: 6 December 2010 / Accepted: 9 December 2010 / Published: 10 December 2010 Abstract: The paper presents a novel pressure sensor based on a silicon nitride (SiNx) nanocoated long-period grating (LPG). The high-temperature, radio-frequency plasma-enhanced chemical-vapor-deposited (RF PECVD) SiNx nanocoating was applied to tune the sensitivity of the LPG to the external refractive index. The technique allows for deposition of good quality, hard and wear-resistant nanofilms as required for optical sensors. Thanks to the SiNx nanocoating it is possible to overcome a limitation of working in the external-refractive-index range, which for a bare fiber cannot be close to that of the cladding. The nanocoated LPG-based sensing structure we developed is functional in high-refractive-index liquids (nD 1.46) such as oil or gasoline, with pressure sensitivity as high as when water is used as a working liquid. The nanocoating developed for this experiment not only has the highest refractive index ever achieved in LPGs (n 2.2 at λ = 1,550 nm), but is also the thinnest (100 nm) able to tune the external-refrac