Nanostructured optical fiber sensors for breathing airflow monitoring

This paper presents recent progresses in the application of nanostructured optical fiber-based sensors for non-invasive, fast and reliable monitoring of respiratory airflow. Molecular-level self-assembly processing method is used to form multilayered inorganic nanocluster and polymer thin films on the distal ends of optical fibers to form such sensors. In order to optimize sensing performance, recent work has studies the synthesis process and the fundamental mechanisms for the change in optical reflection, specifically caused by exhaled air condensation on the coating surface. The physically small sensors fabricated by varying thin film chemistry, offer a full range of environmental relative humidity sensing from 0% to 100% with response times of microseconds, and mostly important, provide much higher sensitivity to breathing air, over 6 times larger than 100% relative humidity. The sensor performances in comparison with a medical nasal thermistor suggest such a thin film sensor an excellent device for advanced breathing airflow monitoring. All the features are appealing to clinical respiratory diagnosis and related sensor instrumentation design, and in good agreement with our analytical model.