Fiber Optic Sensors For Detection of Toxic and Biological Threats.docVIP

Sensors 2007, 7, 3100-3118 sensors ISSN 1424-8220 ? 2007 by MDPI /sensors Review Fiber Optic Sensors for Detection of Toxic and Biological Threats Mahmoud El-Sherif *, Lalitkumar Bansal and Jianming Yuan Photonics Laboratories, Inc.; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 19104, USA; * Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: melsherif@ Received: 2 October 2007 / Accepted: 30 November 2007 / Published: 4 December 2007 Abstract: Protection of public and military personnel from chemical and biological warfare agents is an urgent and growing national security need. Along with this idea, we have developed a novel class of fiber optic chemical sensors, for detection of toxic and biological materials. The design of these fiber optic sensors is based on a cladding modification approach. The original passive cladding of the fiber, in a small section, was removed and the fiber core was coated with a chemical sensitive material. Any change in the optical properties of the modified cladding material, due to the presence of a specific chemical vapor, changes the transmission properties of the fiber and result in modal power redistribution in multimode fibers. Both total intensity and modal power distribution (MPD) measurements were used to detect the output power change through the sensing fibers. The MPD technique measures the power changes in the far field pattern, i.e. spatial intensity modulation in two dimensions. Conducting polymers, such as polyaniline and polypyrrole, have been reported to undergo a reversible change in conductivity upon exposure to chemical vapors. It is found that the conductivity change is accompanied by optical property change in the material. Therefore, polyaniline and polypyrrole were selected as the modified cladding material for the detection of hydrochloride (HCl), ammonia (NH3), hydrazine (H4N2), and dimethyl-methl-phosphonate