Method Article

A Silicon-tipped Fiber-optic Sensing Platform with High Resolution and Fast Response

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DOI:

10.3791/59026

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January 7th, 2019

 ,  ,  ,  , 
1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, 2Naval Research Laboratory, Stennis Space Center, 3Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 4Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

* These authors contributed equally

In This Article

Summary

This work reports an innovative silicon-tipped fiber-optic sensing platform (Si-FOSP) for high-resolution and fast-response measurement of a variety of physical parameters, such as temperature, flow, and radiation. Applications of this Si-FOSP span from oceanographic research, mechanical industry, to fusion energy research.

Abstract

In this article, we introduce an innovative and practically promising fiber-optic sensing platform (FOSP) that we proposed and demonstrated recently. This FOSP relies on a silicon Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) attached to the fiber end, referred to as Si-FOSP in this work. The Si-FOSP generates an interferogram determined by the optical path length (OPL) of the silicon cavity. Measurand alters the OPL and thus shifts the interferogram. Due to the unique optical and thermal properties of the silicon material, this Si-FOSP exhibits an advantageous performance in terms of sensitivity and speed. Furthermore, the mature silicon fabrication industry endows the Si-FOSP with excellent reproducibility and low cost toward practical applications. Depending on the specific applications, either a low-finesse or high-finesse version will be utilized, and two different data demodulation methods will be adopted accordingly. Detailed protocols for fabricating both versions of the Si-FOSP will be provided. Three representative applications and their according results will be shown. The first one is a prototype underwater thermometer for profiling the ocean thermoclines, the second one is a flow meter to measure flow speed in the ocean, and the last one is a bolometer used for monitoring exhaust radiation from magnetically confined high-temperature plasma.

Introduction

Fiber-optic sensors (FOSs) have been the focus for many researchers due to its unique properties, such as its small size, its low cost, its light weight, and its immunity to electromagnetic interference (EMI)1. These FOSs have found wide applications in many areas such as environmental monitoring, ocean surveillance, oil exploration, and industrial process among others. When it comes to the temperature-related sensing, the traditional FOSs are not superior in terms of resolution and speed for the cases where measurement of minute and fast temperature variations is desirable. These limitations stem from the optical and thermal properties of the fused silica material on which many traditional FOSs are based. On one hand, the thermo-optic coefficient (TOC) and thermal expansion coefficient (TEC) of silica are 1.28x10-5 RIU/°C and 5.5x10-7 m/(m·°C), respectively; these values lead to a temperature sensitivity of only about 13 pm/°C around the wavelength of 1550 nm. On the other hand, the thermal diffusivity, which is a measure of the speed of temperature change in response to thermal energy exchange, is only 1.4x10-6 m2/s for silica; this value is not superior for improving the speed of silica-based FOSs.

The fiber-optic sensing platform (FOSP) reported in this article breaks the above limitations of fused silica-based FOSs. The new FOSP utilizes crystalline silicon as the key sensing material, which forms a high-quality Fabry-Perot interferometer (FPI) on the end of the fiber, here referred to as silicon-tipped FOSP (Si-FOSP). Figure 1 shows the schematic and operational principle of the sensor head, which is the core of the Si-FOSP. The sensor head essentially consists of a silicon FPI, whose reflection spectrum features a series of periodic fringes. Destructive interference occurs when the OPL satisfies 2nL=Nλ, where n and L are the refractive index and length of the silicon FP cavity, respectively, and N is an integer that is the order of the fringe notch. Therefore, positions of the interference fringes are responsive to the OPL of the silicon cavity. Depending on the specific applications, the silicon FPI can be made into two types: low-finesse FPI and high-finesse FPI. The low-finesse FPI has a low reflectivity for both ends of the silicon cavity, while the high-finesse FPI has a high reflectivity for both ends of the silicon cavity. The reflectivities of silicon-air and silicon-fiber interfaces are roughly 30% and 18%, thus the sole silicon FPI shown in Figure 1a is essentially a low-finesse FPI. By coating a thin high-reflectivity (HR) layer on both ends, a high-finesse silicon FPI is formed (Figure 1b). Reflectivity of the HR coating (either dielectric or gold) can be as high as 98%. For both types of Si-FOSP, both n and L increase when temperature increases. Thus, by monitoring the fringe shift, the temperature variation can be deduced. Note that for the same amount of wavelength shift, the high-finesse FPI gives a better discrimination due to the much narrower fringe notch (Figure 1c). While the high-finesse Si-FOSP has better resolution, the low-finesse Si-FOSP has a larger dynamic range. Therefore, the choice between these two versions depends on the requirements of a specific application. Furthermore, due to the large difference in full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the low-finesse and high-finesse silicon FPIs, their signal demodulation methods are different. For example, the theoretical FWHM of 1.5 nm is reduced by about 50 times to only 30 pm when both ends of the sole silicon FPI are coated with a 98% HR layer. Therefore, for the low-finesse Si-FOSP, a high-speed spectrometer would suffice for the data collection and processing, while a scanning laser should be used to demodulate the high-finesse Si-FOSP due to the much narrower FWHM that cannot be resolved well by the spectrometer. The two demodulation methods will be explained in the protocol.

The silicon material chosen here is superior for temperature sensing in terms of resolution. As a comparison, the TOC and TEC of silicon are 1.5x10-4 RIU/°C and 2.55x10-6 m/(m∙°C), respectively, leading to a temperature sensitivity of around 84.6 pm/°C which is about 6.5 times higher than that of all silica-based FOSs2.  In addition to this much higher sensitivity, we have demonstrated an average wavelength tracking method to reduce the noise level and thus improve the resolution for a low-finesse sensor, leading to a temperature resolution of 6x10-4 °C 2, in comparison to the resolution of 0.2 °C for an all silica-based FOS3. The resolution is further improved to be 1.2x10-4 °C for a high-finesse version4.  The silicon material is also superior for sensing in terms of speed. As a comparison, the thermal diffusivity of silicon is 8.8x10-5 m2/s, which is more than 60 times higher than that of silica2.  Combined with a small footprint (e.g., 80 µm diameter, 200 µm thickness), the response time of 0.51 ms for a silicon FOS has been demonstrated2,  in comparison to the 16 ms of a micro-silica-fiber coupler tip temperature sensor5.  Although some research work related to temperature measurement using very thin silicon film as the sensing material has been reported by other groups6,7,8,9,  none of them possesses the performance of our sensors in terms of either resolution or speed. For example, the sensor with a resolution of only 0.12 °C and a long response time of 1 s was reported.7 A better temperature resolution of 0.064 °C has been reported10;  however, the speed is limited by the relatively bulky sensor head. What makes the Si-FOSP unique lies in the new fabrication method and data processing algorithm.

Besides the above advantages for temperature sensing, the Si-FOSP can also be developed into a variety of temperature-related sensors aiming at measuring different parameters, such as gas pressure11, air or water flow12,13,14 , and radiation4,15.  This article presents a detailed description of the sensor fabrication and signal demodulation protocols along with three representative applications and their results.

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Protocol

1. Fabrication of Low-Finesse Sensors

  1. Fabricate the silicon pillars. Pattern a piece of 200-µm-thick double-side-polished (DSP) silicon wafer into standalone silicon pillars (Figure 2a), using standard micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) fabrication facilitates.
    NOTE: The patterned wafer is bonded on another larger silicon wafer using a thin layer of photoresist. The bonding force of the photoresist is strong enough to hold the pillars upright, but also weak enough to detach from the substrate for later steps.
  2. Prepare the lead-in fiber. Strip off the plastic coating of the distal end of a single-mode optical fiber. Clean the stripped section using a lens tissue dipped with alcohol. Cleave the cleaned fiber using an optical fiber cleaver.
  3. Apply a thin layer of UV-curable glue on the end-face of the cleaved lead-in fiber (Figure 2b). Put a little drop of UV-curable glue on a piece of glass slide. Thin the glue layer by spin-coating or manually swinging the glass slide. Transfer the glue layer to the fiber end by pressing the end face of the lead-in fiber against the glass slide.
  4. Attach a silicon pillar to the fiber end. Align the lead-in fiber with one of the silicon pillars, meanwhile monitor the real-time reflection spectrum of the silicon FPI using a spectrometer. Use a UV lamp to cure the glue when a satisfactory spectrum is observed (Figure 2c).
    NOTE: In general, the curing process takes around 10 to 15 minutes.
  5. Detach the sensor from the substrate. After the UV glue is fully cured, lift up the lead-in fiber along with the silicon pillar detached from the substrate (Figure 2d).
    NOTE: Some residual photoresist is remained on the top surface of the silicon pillar (Figure 2e). For most cases, the photoresist residual does not affect the function of the sensor. If needed, the photoresist layer can be removed by alcohol.
  6. Examine the fabricated sensor head. Use a microscope to examine the geometry of the fabricated sensor head. A typical image of a sensor successfully fabricated is seen in Figure 2f.

2. Fabrication of High-Finesse Sensors

  1. Coat both sides of a silicon wafer with high-reflectivity mirrors. Coat one side of a 75-µm-thick double-side-polished silicon wafer with a 150 nm thick gold layer using a sputtering coating machine, and coat the other side with a high-reflectivity (HR) dielectric mirror.
    NOTE: The dielectric HR coating was done by an outside company; reflectivity of this coating was tested to be no less than 98% by the company. However, detailed materials and structure of the coating are unknown due to the proprietary protection by the company, see the Table of Materials for more information.
  2. Prepare the collimated lead-in fiber. Splice a short section of graded-index multi-mode fiber (GI-MMF) with a single-mode fiber, and then, under an optical microscope, cleave the GI-MMF with a quarter of the period of the light trajectory within the MMF left to form a fiber collimator (Figure 3a).
    NOTE: The GI-MMF is used to expand the modal field diameter so that a spectrum with a better visibility can be obtained4,16. The length of the GI-MMF, which is around 250 µm in this work, is exactly one quarter of the period of the ray trajectory.
  3. Attach a fragmented double-side coated silicon to the lead-in fiber. Assemble a high-finesse sensor by following the similar steps of attaching a silicon pillar to the fiber end for fabricating low-finesse sensors (steps 1.3 – 1.5).
    NOTE: The side with the dielectric coating will be attached to the collimator to let in the coming light (Figure 3b, 3 c). In this case, the previous silicon pillar is replaced with a silicon fragment, which was not patterned. In the future, the patterned silicon wafer will be coated with the high-reflectivity mirrors, so that the sensors are more uniform and easier for fabrication. The difference in the fabrication steps of 1.3-1.5 is that a reflection spectra notch with proper visibility should be obtained first before the glue was transferred to the end face of the collimator.
  4. Polish the irregularly-shaped silicon fragment into a circular shape using a fiber polishing machine.
  5. Examine the fabricated sensor head. Use a microscope to examine the sensor head to make sure a desirable circular shape is achieved (Figure 3d).

3. Signal Demodulation for Low-Finesse Si-FOSP

NOTE: The system used for demodulating the low-finesse Si-FOSP is shown in Figure 4a. The following detailed steps help set up the system and perform the data processing.

  1. Connect a C-band broadband source to port 1 of an optical circulator.
  2. Splice port 2 of the optical circulator with the lead-in fiber of a low-finesse sensor.
  3. Connect port 3 of the optical circulator to a high-speed spectrometer which communicates with a computer for data storage.
  4. Check the spectrum of the sensor to make sure the system works properly. See the typical spectrum shown in Figure 4b.

4. Signal Demodulation for High-Finesse Si-FOSP

NOTE: The system used for demodulating the high-finesse Si-FOSP is shown in Figure 5a. The following detailed steps help set up the system and do the data post-processing.

  1. Sweep a tunable DFB laser using a current controller.
    NOTE: The peak-to-peak sweeping voltage, which varies for different lasers and controllers, should be large enough to cover the spectrum notch.
  2. Connect the output of the tunable laser to port 1 of an optical circulator.
  3. Splice port 2 of the optical circulator to a high-finesse sensor.
  4. Connect port 3 of the optical circulator to a photodetector.
  5. Use a data acquisition device to read the output of the photodetector, which is stored by a computer.
  6. Check the spectrum of the sensor to make sure the system works properly. See a typical frame of spectrum shown in Figure 5b. Find the valley position using a polynomial curve fitting.

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Results

Si-FOSP as an underwater thermometer for profiling ocean thermoclines
Recent oceanographic research has demonstrated that the blurring of underwater imaging stems not only from turbidity in contaminated waters but also from temperature microstructures in clean ocean17,18. The latter effect has been the focus of many oceanographers, aiming to find an effective way to rectify the blurred images...

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Discussion

The choice of the size (length and diameter) of the silicon FPI is made upon the tradeoff between requirements on the resolution and speed. In general, a smaller size provides a higher speed but also reduces the resolution2. A short length is advantageous for obtaining a higher speed, but it is not superior for obtaining a high resolution due to the expanded FWHM of the reflection notches. Using HR coatings to reduce the FWHM can help improve the resolution, but it will limit the dynamic range due...

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Disclosures

An U.S. patent (No. 9995628 B1) has been issued to protect the related technologies.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (Nos. N0017315P0376, N0017315P3755); U.S. Office of Naval Research (Nos. N000141410139, N000141410456); U.S. Department of Energy (Nos. DE-SC0018273, DE-AC02-09CH11466, DE-AC05-00OR22725).

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Materials

List of materials used in this article
NameCompanyCatalog NumberComments
200 Proof Pure EthanolKoptecV1001
5 Channels Duplex CWDMFiber Store5MDD-ABS-FSCWDM
Butterfly Laser Diode MountsTholabsLM14S2
CastAway CTDYellow Springs Instrument
CTDSeabirdSBE 19plus
Current MeterNortekVector
Data Acquisition DeviceNational InstrumentsNIUSB4366
Digital OscilloscopeRIGOLDS1204B200 MHz 2 GSa/s
Diode LaserThorlabsLM9LPWavelength: 632 nm
Fixed BNC Terminator KitThorlabsFTK01
Function Waveform Generator RIGOLDG4162160 MHz 500 GSa/s
High Precision CleaverFujikuraCT-32
High Reflection Dielectric CoatingEvaporated Coating INC (ECI)Materials and structure of the coating are unknown
I-MON 512 SpectrometerIbsen PhtonicsP/N: 1257110
InGaAs Biased DetectorTholabsDET01CFCFC/PC output:0-10V; Quantity: 2
Laser DiodeQphotonicQFLD-405-20SWavelength: 405 nm
Laser Diode Current ControllerTholabsLDC 210C1 A and 100 mA range 
Laser Diode Temperature ControllerTholabsTEC 200CQuantity: 2
Latex Examination GlovesHCS
Micro SlidesCorning Incorporated
Narrow Linewidth DFB LaserEblanaEP1550-NLW-B06-100FMWavelength:1550 nm
Optical Fiber Fusion SplicerSumitomo electric industries, LTD3822-2
Optical Microscope and MonitorIkegami Tsushinki CompanyPM-127
Optical Spectrum AnalyzerYokogawaAQ6370Cwavelength range: 600-1700 nm
Polish MachineULTRA TEC41076
Post-mountable IrisesThorlabsQuantity: 2
Pump LaserGooch and Housego0400-0974-SMWavelength: 980 nm
Si Amplified PhotodetectorThorlabsPDA36AWavelength: 350-1100 nm
Silicon waferUniversity Waferthickness: 10 µm, 200 µm, 75 µm, 40 µm
Single mode fiber CorningSMF-28
Single Mode Fused  Fiber CouplerThorlabsWavelength: 1550 nm
SM 125 interogratorMicron Optics
Submersible Aquarium PumpSonglongSL-403
Superluminscent LEDDenselight SemiconductorsDL-BP1-1501Awavelength range:1510-1590 nm
Syringe PumpCole Parmer74905-02
Travel Translation StageThorlabsLT1
UV curable glueEpoxy TechnologyPB109077
UVGL-15 Compact UV LmapUVPP/N:95-0017-09254/365 nm
Variable Optical AttenuatorsTholabsM-VA/00016951 P/N: VOA50-APC

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Silicon Fabry Perot InterferometerOptical Path LengthLow Finesse SensorHigh Finesse SensorUnderwater ThermometerFlow MeterBolometerMEMS FabricationOptical Circulator

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