TY - JOUR
T1 - 3D Printing Optofluidic Mach-Zehnder Interferometer on a Fiber Tip for Refractive Index Sensing
AU - Zhang, Dengwei
AU - Wei, Heming
AU - Krishnaswamy, Sridhar
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received September 7, 2019; accepted September 23, 2019. Date of publication September 26, 2019; date of current version November 12, 2019. This work was supported in part by China Scholarship Council (CSC) under Grant 201806325026, in part by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant 61203190 and Grant 61601405, and in part by the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province under Grant LY17F030010. (Corresponding author: Heming Wei.) D. Zhang is with the State Key Laboratory of Modern Optical Instrumentation, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China (e-mail: seaskyzdw@ zju.edu.cn).
PY - 2019/11/1
Y1 - 2019/11/1
N2 - An optofluidic polymer Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) fabricated via direct laser writing (DLW) on a fiber tip is proposed and experimentally demonstrated as a refractometer where one of the interference arms is made of the polymer waveguide while the other arm is a hollow cavity with a 1-\mu \text{m} wall thickness and containing two open channels. The analytes can be filled through the channels, forming an optofluidic component of the interferometer. In this letter, two MZI microstructures with different hollow lengths are described and characterized. The experimental results of the two MZIs in air and water show that the MZI with a longer hollow cavity has higher sensitivity. Analytes such as de-ionized (DI) water and glucose solutions with different concentrations have been measured in the MZI with the long hollow cavity. The results show that this kind of sensing device provides a promising platform for refractive index measurements with a sensitivity of 593.75 nm/RIU based on the FSR calculation method.
AB - An optofluidic polymer Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) fabricated via direct laser writing (DLW) on a fiber tip is proposed and experimentally demonstrated as a refractometer where one of the interference arms is made of the polymer waveguide while the other arm is a hollow cavity with a 1-\mu \text{m} wall thickness and containing two open channels. The analytes can be filled through the channels, forming an optofluidic component of the interferometer. In this letter, two MZI microstructures with different hollow lengths are described and characterized. The experimental results of the two MZIs in air and water show that the MZI with a longer hollow cavity has higher sensitivity. Analytes such as de-ionized (DI) water and glucose solutions with different concentrations have been measured in the MZI with the long hollow cavity. The results show that this kind of sensing device provides a promising platform for refractive index measurements with a sensitivity of 593.75 nm/RIU based on the FSR calculation method.
KW - Mach-Zehnder interferometer
KW - Optofluidic
KW - direct laser writing
KW - refractive index sensor
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U2 - 10.1109/LPT.2019.2943897
DO - 10.1109/LPT.2019.2943897
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85077707252
VL - 31
SP - 1725
EP - 1728
JO - IEEE Photonics Technology Letters
JF - IEEE Photonics Technology Letters
SN - 1041-1135
IS - 21
M1 - 8850017
ER -