Highly Sensitive Carbon Nanotubes Coated Etched Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor for Humidity Sensing

Highly Sensitive Carbon Nanotubes Coated Etched Fiber Bragg Grating Sensor for Humidity Sensing

The sensing of relative humidity (RH) at room temperature has potential applications in several areas ranging from biomedical to horticulture, paper, and textile industries. In this paper, a highly sensitive humidity sensor based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coated on the surface of an etched fiber Br...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:IEEE sensors journal Vol. 14; no. 8; pp. 2615 - 2619
Main Authors: Shivananju, Bannur Nanjunda, Yamdagni, Sumeet, Fazuldeen, Ruknudeen, Kumar, Anakkat Koyilothu Sarin, Nithin, Shamraju Purushotham, Varma, Manoj M., Asokan, Sundarrajan
Format: Journal Article
Language:English
Published: New York IEEE 01-08-2014
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
Subjects:
Fiber gratings
Humidity
Optical fiber sensors
Refractive index
Sensors
Temperature sensors
carbon nanotubes
humidity sensing
Etched fiber Bragg grating sensor
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Summary:The sensing of relative humidity (RH) at room temperature has potential applications in several areas ranging from biomedical to horticulture, paper, and textile industries. In this paper, a highly sensitive humidity sensor based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) coated on the surface of an etched fiber Bragg grating (EFBG) sensor has been demonstrated, for detecting RH over a wide range of 20%-90% at room temperature. When water molecules interact with the CNT coated EFBG, the effective refractive index of the fiber core changes, resulting in a shift in the Bragg wavelength. It has been possible to achieve a high sensitivity of ~31 RH, which is the highest compared with many of the existing FBG-based humidity sensors. The limit of detection in the CNT coated EFBG has been found to be ~0.03 RH . The experimental data shows a linear response of Bragg wavelength shift with increase in humidity. This novel method of incorporating CNTs on to the FBG sensor for humidity sensing has not been reported before.
ISSN:1530-437X
1558-1748
DOI:10.1109/JSEN.2014.2312353