Humidity sensor base on the ZnO nanorods and fiber modal interferometer

A novel fiber relative humidity (RH) sensor is demonstrated in this paper. The sensor is composed of a fiber Michelson modal interferometer (MMI) and the ZnO nanorods which grown on the fiber to improve the sensitivity of the sensor. Two standard single mode fibers are spliced to form the MMI, misaligned splicing program is used at the spliced point. Relative humidity sensing experiment shows that the intensity of interference spectrum changes linearly with relative humidity. With the relative humidity increasing in the range from 30% to 85%, the intensity of the dip in the interference spectrum linearly increases higher than 50%. The relative humidity response of the sensor is induced by the interference between core mode and cladding mode. The ZnO nanorods with high surface to volume ratio grown outside of the fiber cladding enhance the sensitivity of the sensor.

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