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Strain sensors that can rapidly and efficiently detect strain distribution and magnitude are crucial for structural health monitoring and human–computer interactions. However, traditional electrical and optical strain sensors make access to structural health information challenging because data conversion is required, and they have intricate, delicate designs. Drawing inspiration from the moisture-responsive coloration of beetle wing sheaths, we propose using Ecoflex as a flexible substrate. This substrate is coated with a Fabry–Perot (F–P) optical structure, comprising a “reflective layer/stretchable interference cavity/reflective layer”, creating a dynamic color-changing visual strain sensor. Upon the application of external stress, the flexible interference chamber of the sensor stretches and contracts, prompting a blue-shift in the structural reflection curve and displaying varying colors that correlate with the applied strain. The innovative flexible sensor can be attached to complex-shaped components, enabling the visual detection of structural integrity. This biomimetic visual strain sensor holds significant promise for real-time structural health monitoring applications.

Low-frequency and 1/f noise are common measurement limitations that arise in a variety of physical processes. Mitigation methods for these noises are dependent on their source. Here, we present a method for removing 1/f noise of optical origin using a micro-cavity Fabry–Pérot (FP) interferometer. A mechanical modulation of the FP cavity length was applied to a previously studied opto-mechanical sensor. It effectively mimics an up-conversion of the laser frequency, shifting signals to a region where lower white-noise sources dominate and 1/f noise is not present. Demodulation of this signal shifts the results back to the desired frequency range of observation with the reduced noise floor of the higher frequencies. This method was found to improve sensitivities by nearly two orders of magnitude at 1 Hz and eliminated 1/f noise in the range from 1 Hz to 4 kHz. A mathematical model for low-finesse FP cavities is presented to support these results. This study suggests a relatively simple and efficient method for 1/f noise suppression and improving the device sensitivity of systems with an FP interferometer readout.

To achieve omnidirectional sensitive detection of partial discharge (PD) in transformers and to avoid missing PD signals, a fiber optic omnidirectional sensing method for PD in transformers combined with the fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and Fabry-Perot (F-P) cavity is proposed. The fiber optic omnidirectional sensor for PD as a triangular prism was developed. The hollow structure of the probe was used to insert a single-mode fiber to form an F-P cavity. In addition, the three sides of the probe were used to form a diaphragm-type FBG sensing structure. The ultrasound sensitization diaphragm was designed based on the frequency characteristics of PD in the transformer and the vibration model of the diaphragm in the liquid environment. The fiber optic sensing system for PD was built and the performance test was conducted. The results show that the resonant frequency of the FBG acoustic diaphragm is around 20 kHz and that of the F-P cavity acoustic diaphragm is 94 kHz. The sensitivity of the developed fiber optic sensor is higher than that of the piezoelectric transducer (PZT). The lower limit of PD detection is 68.72 pC for the FBG sensing part and 47.97 pC for the F-P cavity sensing part. The directional testing of the sensor and its testing within a transformer simulation model indicate that the proposed sensor achieves higher detection sensitivity of PD in all directions. The omnidirectional partial discharge ultrasound sensing method proposed in this paper is expected to reduce the missed detection rate of PD.

We present a novel terahertz (THz) Fabry–Perot (FP) microcavity biosensor that uses a porous polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) supporting film to improve microorganism detection. The THz FP microcavity confines and enhances fields in the middle of the cavity, where the target microbial film is placed with the aid of a PTFE film having a dielectric constant close to unity in the THz range. The resonant frequency shift increased linearly with increasing amount of yeasts, without showing saturation behavior under our experimental conditions. These results agree well with finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations. The sensor’s sensitivity was 11.7 GHz/μm, close to the optimal condition of 12.5 GHz/μm, when yeast was placed at the cavity’s center, but no frequency shift was observed when the yeast was coated on the mirror side. We derived an explicit relation for the frequency shift as a function of the index, amount, and location of the substances that is consistent with the electric field distribution across the cavity. We also produced THz transmission images of yeast-coated PTFE, mapping the frequency shift of the FP resonance and revealing the spatial distribution of yeast.

High resolution optical interferometry often requires thermal and acoustic insultation to reduce and remove environment-induced fluctuations. Broader applications of interferometric optical sensors in the future call for low-cost materials with both low thermal diffusivity and good soundproofing capability. In this paper, we explore the feasibility and effectiveness of natural soil as an insulation material for ultrahigh-resolution fiber-optic interferometry. An insulation chamber surrounded by soil is constructed, and its impact on the noise reduction of a Mach-Zehnder Fabry-Perot hybrid fiber interferometer is evaluated. Our results indicate that soil can effectively reduce ambient noise across a broad frequency range. Moreover, compared to conventional insulation materials such as polyurethane foam, soil shows superior insulation performance at low frequencies and thereby affords better long-term stability. This work demonstrates the practicability of soil as a legitimate option of insulation material for precision optical experiments.

Optical fiber Fabry–Perot sensors have long been the focus of researchers in sensing applications because of their unique advantages, including highly effective, simple light path, low cost, compact size, and easy fabrication. Microcantilever-based devices have been extensively explored in chemical and biological fields while the interrogation methods are still a challenge. The optical fiber probe microcantilever sensor is constructed with a microcantilever beam on an optical fiber, which opens the door for highly sensitive, as well as convenient readout. In this review, we summarize a wide variety of optical fiber probe microcantilever sensors based on Fabry–Perot interferometer. The operation principle of the optical fiber probe microcantilever sensor is introduced. The fabrication methods, materials, and sensing applications of an optical fiber probe microcantilever sensor with different structures are discussed in detail. The performances of different kinds of fiber probe microcantilever sensors are compared. We also prospect the possible development direction of optical fiber microcantilever sensors.

A high-precision cross-correlation cavity length demodulation method for fiber-optic Fabry–Perot (F–P) sensors based on two different wavelength superluminescent diodes (SLDs) was proposed. This method can solve the problem of low demodulation accuracy caused by the difficulty in identifying the maximum cross-correlation coefficient when the cavity length of the fiber-optic F–P fiber sensor is too short, or when the spectral bandwidth of the illuminating single-light source is too narrow. This demodulation method is based on the principle that the two main peaks of the two cross-correlation curves corresponding to two different spectral ranges should match, and the average value of the two calculated cavity lengths corresponding to the two matched peaks is determined as the real cavity length. The cavity length demodulation of fiber-optic F–P sensors in the range of 20–200 μm shows a maximum measurement deviation of 0.008 μm, which is significantly smaller than the demodulation result obtained with a single light source, and the standard deviation of the measurement results is only approximately 0.0005 μm, indicating the high precision and stability of a dual SLD cross-correlation demodulation method.

In order to meet the needs of attitude correction of the optical fiber sensor array, an all-fiber optical sensor combined with FBG and CFBG-FP is proposed to monitor its attitude angle. The FBG sensor for pitch and roll angles detection employs a geometric model solution to shift the center wavelength of the three fiber Bragg gratings connected to it through the mass sphere, allowing for pitch and roll angle detection. Based on the magnetostrictive effect, the CFBG-FP sensor for heading angle detection employs changes of the cavity length of the chirped grating Fabry-Pérot cavity connected to its surface. The method of interpolation data processing and derivation of the attitude angle matrix is used to realize heading angle detection. The experimental results indicate that the FBG sensor for the pitch and roll angles detection has an effective detection range of 180 degrees and an angle measurement error of less than 1.5 degrees. Meanwhile, in the region beyond 10 degrees in the geomagnetic north-south direction, the angle measurement error of the CFBG-FP sensor for the heading angle detection is less than 1.3 degrees. Moreover, the impact of temperature in the system is minimized, demonstrating the validity of this combined fiber optical approach in the attitude angle measurements.

A diaphragm-based hermetic optical fiber Fabry–Pérot (FP) cavity is proposed and demonstrated for pressure sensing. The FP cavity is hermetically sealed using one-step CO2 laser welding with a cavity length from 30 to 100 μm. A thin diaphragm is formed by polishing the hermetic FP cavity for pressure sensing. The fabricated FP cavity has a fringe contrast larger than 15 dB. The experimental results show that the fabricated device has a linear response to the change in pressure, with a sensitivity of −2.02 nm/MPa in the range of 0 to 4 MPa. The results demonstrate that the proposed fabrication technique can be used for fabricating optical fiber microcavities for sensing applications.

Refractometry is a powerful technique for pressure assessments that, due to the recent redefinition of the SI system, also offers a new route to realizing the SI unit of pressure, the Pascal. Gas modulation refractometry (GAMOR) is a methodology that has demonstrated an outstanding ability to mitigate the influences of drifts and fluctuations, leading to long-term precision in the 10−7 region. However, its short-term performance, which is of importance for a variety of applications, has not yet been scrutinized. To assess this, we investigated the short-term performance (in terms of precision) of two similar, but independent, dual Fabry–Perot cavity refractometers utilizing the GAMOR methodology. Both systems assessed the same pressure produced by a dead weight piston gauge. That way, their short-term responses were assessed without being compromised by any pressure fluctuations produced by the piston gauge or the gas delivery system. We found that the two refractometer systems have a significantly higher degree of concordance (in the 10−8 range at 1 s) than what either of them has with the piston gauge. This shows that the refractometry systems under scrutiny are capable of assessing rapidly varying pressures (with bandwidths up to 2 Hz) with precision in the 10−8 range.

Infrared (IR) polarimetric imaging has attracted attention as a promising technology in many fields. Generally, superpixels consisting of linear polarizer elements at different angles plus IR imaging array are used to obtain the polarized target signature by using the detected polarization-sensitive intensities. However, the spatial arrangement of superpixels across the imaging array may lead to an incorrect polarimetric signature of a target, due to the range of angles from which the incident radiation can be collected by the detector. In this article, we demonstrate the effect of the incident angle on the polarization performance of an alternative structure where a dielectric layer is inserted between the nanoimprinted subwavelength grating layers. The well-designed spacer creates the Fabry–Perot cavity resonance, and thereby, the intensity of transverse-magnetic I-polarized light transmitted through two metal grating layers is increased as compared with a single-layer metal grating, whereas transverse-electric (TE)-transmitted light intensity is decreased. TM-transmittance and polarization extinction ratio (PER) of normally incident light of wavelength 4.5 μm are obtained with 0.49 and 132, respectively, as the performance of the stacked subwavelength gratings. The relative change of the PERs for nanoimprint-lithographically fabricated double-layer grating samples that are less than 6% at an angle of incidence up to 25°, as compared to the normal incidence. Our work can pave the way for practical and efficient polarization-sensitive elements, which are useful for many IR polarimetric imaging applications.

This study presents an extrinsic Fabry−Perot interferometric (EFPI) fiber-optic strain sensor with a very short cavity. The sensor consists of two vertically cut standard single-mode fibers (SMFs) and a glass capillary with a length of several centimeters. The two SMFs penetrate into the glass capillary and are fixed at its two ends with the use of ultraviolet (UV) curable adhesives. Based on the use of the lengthy glass capillary sensitive element, the strain sensitivity can be greatly enhanced. Experiments showed that the microcavity EPFI strain sensor with initial cavity lengths of 20 μm, 30 μm, and 40 μm, and a capillary length of 40 mm, can yield respective cavity length−strain sensitivities of 15.928 nm/με, 25.281 nm/με, and 40.178 nm/με, while its linearity was very close to unity for strain measurements spanning a range in excess of 3500 με. Furthermore, the strain−temperature cross-sensitivity was extremely low.

A zero-cross detection algorithm was proposed for the cavity-length interrogation of fiber-optic Fabry−Perot (FP) sensors. The method can avoid the inaccuracy of peak determination in the conventional peak-to-peak method for the cavity-length interrogation of fiber-optic FP sensors caused by the slow variation of the spectral power density in peak neighboring regions. Both simulations and experiments were carried out to investigate the feasibility and performance of the zero-cross detection algorithm. Fiber-optic FP sensors with cavity lengths in the range of 150−1000 μm were successfully interrogated with a maximum error of 0.083 μm.

A white light non-scanning correlation interrogation system was proposed and built to interrogate absolute length of the air cavity of fiber-optic compound Fabry–Perot pressure sensors for the extraction of pressure value. By carefully choosing thickness range and tilt angle of the optical wedge used for cavity length matching, correlation interferometric signal of the basal cavity can be naturally filtered out. Based on peak positioning by Fourier transform, bandpass filtering in frequency domain, inverse Fourier transform back to time domain, envelope fitting and zero fringe finding through a gravity center method, cavity length can be determined with an accuracy of 0.04%. The system was used for the interrogation of a fiber-optic compound Fabry–Perot pressure sensor under different pressures. For a pressure range of 0.1~2.9 Mpa, the linear relationship between the air cavity length and the gas pressure imposed was successfully extracted.

A novel optofluidic sensor that measures the local pressure of the fluid inside a microfluidic channel is presented. It can be integrated directly on-channel and requires no additional layers in fabrication. The detection can be accomplished at a single wavelength; and thereby, only a single laser diode and a single photodetector are required. This renders the sensor to be compact, cheap and easy to fabricate. Basically, the sensor consisted of a Fabry⁻Pérot microresonator enclosing the fluidic channel. A novel structure of the Fabry⁻Pérot was employed to achieve high-quality factor, that was essential to facilitate the single wavelength detection. The enhanced performance was attributed to the curved mirrors and cylindrical lenses used to avoid light diffraction loss. The presented sensor was fabricated and tested with deionized water liquid and shown to exhibit a sensitivity up to 12.46 dBm/bar, and a detection limit of 8.2 mbar. Numerical simulations are also presented to evaluate the mechanical⁻fluidic performance of the device.

Fiber Fabry–Perot cavity sensing probes with high thermal stability for dynamic signal detection which are based on a new method of structure compensation by a proposed thermal expansion model, are presented here. The model reveals that the change of static cavity length with temperature only depends on the thermal expansion coefficient of the materials and the structure parameters. So, fiber Fabry–Perot cavity sensing probes with inherent temperature insensitivity can be obtained by structure compensation. To verify the method, detailed experiments were carried out. The experimental results reveal that the static cavity length of the fiber Fabry–Perot cavity sensing probe with structure compensation hardly changes in the temperature range of −20 to 60 °C and that the method is highly reproducible. Such a method provides a simple approach that allows the as-fabricated fiber Fabry–Perot cavity acoustic sensor to be used for practical applications, exhibiting the great advantages of its simple architecture and high reliability.

This paper presents a monolithic sapphire pressure sensor that is constructed from two commercially available sapphire wafers through a combination of reactive-ion etching and wafer bonding. A Fabry–Perot (FP) cavity is sealed fully between the adhesive-free bonded sapphire wafers and thus acts as a pressure transducer. A combination of standard silica fiber, bonded sapphire wafers and free-space optics is proposed to couple the optical signal to the FP cavity of the sensor. The pressure in the FP cavity is measured by applying both white-light interferometry and diaphragm deflection theory over a range of 0.03 to 3.45 MPa at room temperature. With an all-sapphire configuration, the adhesive-free bonded sapphire sensor is expected to be suitable for in-situ pressure measurements in extreme harsh environments.

The absolute distance between the mirrors of a Fabry-Perot cavity with a spacer from an ultra low expansion material was measured by an ultra wide tunable laser diode. The DFB laser diode working at 1542 nm with 1.5 MHz linewidth and 2 nm tuning range has been suppressed with an unbalanced heterodyne fiber interferometer. The frequency noise of laser has been suppressed by 40 dB across the Fourier frequency range 30–300 Hz and by 20 dB up to 4 kHz and the linewidth of the laser below 300 kHz. The relative resolution of the measurement was 10 − 9 that corresponds to 0.3 nm (sub-nm) for 0.178 m long cavity with ability of displacement measurement of 0.5 mm.

Based on the characteristic magnetic-controlled refractive index property, in this paper, a magnetic fluid is used as a sensitive medium to detect the magnetic field in the fiber optic Fabry-Perot (FP) cavity. The temperature compensation in fiber Fabry-Perot magnetic sensor is demonstrated and achieved. The refractive index of the magnetic fluid varies with the applied magnetic field and external temperature, and a cross-sensitivity effect of the temperature and magnetic field occurs in the Fabry-Perot magnetic sensor and the accuracy of magnetic field measurements is affected by the thermal effect. In order to overcome this problem, we propose a modified sensor structure. With a fiber Bragg grating (FBG) written in the insert fiber end of the Fabry-Perot cavity, the FBG acts as a temperature compensation unit for the magnetic field measurement and it provides an effective solution to the cross-sensitivity effect. The experimental results show that the sensitivity of magnetic field detection improves from 0.23 nm/mT to 0.53 nm/mT, and the magnetic field measurement resolution finally reaches 37.7 T. The temperature-compensated FP-FBG magnetic sensor has obvious advantages of small volume and high sensitivity, and it has a good prospect in applications in the power industry and national defense technology areas.