Optical fiber waist-enlarged bitaper-based Michelson interferometric humidity sensor

An optical fiber waist-enlarged bitaper-based Michelson interferometric sensor is proposed and experimentally demonstrated for humidity measurement. The waist enlarged bitaper is created for light coupling between core mode and cladding modes propagating in the fiber interferometer. A chitason layer is plated onto the surface of the interferometer to act as a humidity-to-refractive index (RI) transducer and thus humidity measurement can be realized by monitoring the wavelength shifts of its interferogram induced by RI variations. The influence of the coating thickness and concentration of chitason on relative humidity (RH) measurement is experimentally studied. The coating sensor demonstrates an optimal humidity-sensing ability, with a humidity sensitivity and fast time-response of ~26 pm/%RH and ~5 s respectively, when it is 3-dip coated in chitason solutions of the concentration of 1 wt.%. The proposed humidity sensor is compact, cost-effective and of easy-operation, therefore it has potentials in many practical applications.