Extreme Silica Optical Fibre Gratings.docVIP

Sensors 2008, 8, 6448-6452; DOI: 10.3390/s8106448 OPEN ACCESS sensors ISSN 1424-8220 /journal/sensors Communication Extreme Silica Optical Fibre Gratings John Canning 1,*, Michael Stevenson 1 , Somnath Bandyopadhyay 1,2 and Kevin Cook 1 1 Interdisciplinary Photonics Laboratories/ School of Chemistry, University of Sydney, Australia; E-Mails: j.canning@.au; m.stevenson@.au; k.cook@.au 2 Fibre Optics Laboratories / Central Glass and Ceramics Research Institute, Kolkata, India; E-Mail: somnath@cgcri.res.in * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: j.canning@.au; Tel.: +61-2- Fax: +61293511911 Received: 2 September 2008; in revised form: 18 September 2008 / Accepted: 17 October 2008 / Published: 20 October 2008 Abstract: A regenerated optical fibre Bragg grating that survives temperature cycling up to 1,295°C is demonstrated. A model based on seeded crystallisation or amorphisation is proposed. Keywords: Regenerated gratings, fibre Bragg gratings, temperature sensing 1. Introduction Recently, we have reported for the first time regenerated fibre Bragg gratings in standard photosensitive boron codoped germanosilicate optical fibre that approach 10% transmission [1, 2]. Regenerated Bragg gratings are gratings that have grown through thermal processing at high temperatures (~900oC) after the seed grating written by UV light is erased. In that work we showed that these gratings could be temperature cycled with very little degradation from room temperature to ~1,000°C. Such ultra high temperature gratings are extremely important for high temperature monitoring applications including high power fibre laser operation and numerous applications in the mining and energy industries. In particular, high temperature industrial processing of materials such steel and aluminium in smelters, can benefit from greater power consumption efficiencies if