Thin film-coated plastic optical fiber probe for aerosol chemical sensing applications

The increasing importance of aerosols in understanding environmental processes as well as the general use of aerosol technologies has led to great interest in aerosol characterization. Thus, we present the development of a thin film-coated plastic optical fiber probe for aerosol chemical composition sensing. To prepare the sensor probe, a small length of cladding was removed from the middle portion of the plastic optical fiber. A thin film of tetraethylorthosilane (TEOS), prepared using the sol-gel technique, was deposited on the surface of the unclad portion of the fiber via dip coating. Sensor responses are reported for various aerosols and are found to be encouraging. The thin film-coated plastic optical fiber is found to increase the sensitivity of the sensor. A plastic fiber optic aerosol chemical sensor based on evanescent wave absorption is presented here, to the best of our knowledge, for the first time.