Fiber Optical Bragg Grating Refractometer

We have demonstrated an evanescent field refractive indexfiber sensor comprising a 42-mm Bragg grating in an etched fiber together with a tunable Distributed Bragg Reflector (DBR) laser. Characterization of different aqueous sucrose solutions resulted in a resolution of roughly 10 mM sucrose. The sensor in the presented form has a theoretical sensitivity of higher than 10 5 refractive index unit (riu) in a refractive index region close to the cladding index of the fiber. However, the technique allows for an even higher sensitivity than 10 6 riu with a proper signal processing scheme.