A robust salinity sensor based on encapsulated long-period grating in microfiber

A robust fiber sensor for salinity measurement based on encapsulated long-period grating in microfiber is proposed. The long-period grating is fabricated in microfiber by inducing periodical deformation with CO2 laser, which is then encapsulated in a holey capillary tube. The encapsulation tube is designed to effectively protect the microfiber from external interference, but does not change the optical properties of the fiber and the response speed of the sensor, which makes the sensor more robust for real applications. Experimental results show that the sensor can achieve a sensitivity of 2.16 nm/% with a good linearity for concentration from 0% to 20%. It is theoretically proved that the sensitivity can be further improved by optimizing the diameter parameters. Such structure may be used as low loss evanescent-wave-coupled optical absorption, fluorescent and gain cells, photoacoustic cells, and etc.