Zeonex-PMMA microstructured polymer optical FBGs for simultaneous humidity and temperature sensing.

In this Letter, we report for the first time, to the best of our knowledge, the fabrication and characterization of a Zeonex/PMMA microstructured polymer optical fiber (mPOF) Bragg grating sensor for simultaneous monitoring of relative humidity (RH) and temperature. The sensing element (probe) is based on two separate in-line fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) inscribed in the fabricated mPOF. A root mean square deviation of 0.8% RH and 0.6°C in the range of 10%-90% RH and 20°C-80°C was found. The developed mPOFBG sensor constitutes an efficient route toward low-cost, easy-to-fabricate and compact multi-parameter sensing solutions.

Single mode step-index polymer optical fiber for humidity insensitive high temperature fiber Bragg grating sensors.

We have fabricated the first single-mode step-index and humidity insensitive polymer optical fiber operating in the 850 nm wavelength ranges. The step-index preform is fabricated using injection molding, which is an efficient method for cost effective, flexible and fast preparation of the fiber preform. The fabricated single-mode step-index (SI) polymer optical fiber (POF) has a 4.8µm core made from TOPAS grade 5013S-04 with a glass transition temperature of 134°C and a 150 µm cladding made from ZEONEX grade 480R with a glass transition temperature of 138°C. The key advantages of the proposed SIPOF are low water absorption, high operating temperature and chemical inertness to acids and bases and many polar solvents as compared to the conventional poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) and polystyrene based POFs. In addition, the fiber Bragg grating writing time is short compared to microstructured POFs.

Design and optimization of mechanically down-doped terahertz fiber directional couplers.

We present a thorough practical design optimization of broadband low loss, terahertz (THz) photonic crystal fiber directional couplers in which the two cores are mechanically down-doped with a triangular array of air holes. A figure of merit taking both the 3-dB bandwidth and loss of the coupler into account, is used for optimization of the structure parameters, given by the diameter and pitch of the cladding (d and Λ) and of the core (d(c) and Λc) air-hole structure. The coupler with Λ = 498.7 µm, d = 324.2 µm, Λc = 74.8 µm, and d(c) = 32.5 µm is found to have the best performance at a center frequency of 1THz, with a bandwidth of 0.25 THz and a total device loss of 9.2 dB. The robustness of the optimum coupler to structural changes is investigated.

High-Tg TOPAS microstructured polymer optical fiber for fiber Bragg grating strain sensing at 110 degrees.

We present the fabrication and characterization of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) in an endlessly single-mode microstructured polymer optical fiber (mPOF) made of humidity-insensitive high-Tg TOPAS cyclic olefin copolymer. The mPOF is the first made from grade 5013 TOPAS with a glass transition temperature of Tg = 135°C and we experimentally demonstrate high strain operation (2.5%) of the FBG at 98°C and stable operation up to a record high temperature of 110°C. The Bragg wavelengths of the FBGs are around 860 nm, where the propagation loss is 5.1 dB/m, close to the fiber loss minimum of 3.67 dB/m at 787 nm.

Fabrication and characterization of porous-core honeycomb bandgap THz fibers.

We present a numerical and experimental investigation of a low-loss porous-core honeycomb fiber for terahertz wave guiding. The introduction of a porous core with hole size of the same dimension as the holes in the surrounding honeycomb cladding results in a fiber that can be drawn with much higher precision and reproducibility than a corresponding air-core fiber. The high-precision hole structure provides very clear bandgap guidance and the location of the two measured bandgaps agree well with simulations based on finite-element modeling. Fiber loss measurements reveal the frequency-dependent coupling loss and propagation loss, and we find that the fiber propagation loss is much lower than the bulk material loss within the first band gap between 0.75 and 1.05 THz.

Humidity insensitive TOPAS polymer fiber Bragg grating sensor.

We report the first experimental demonstration of a humidity insensitive polymer optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG), as well as the first FBG recorded in a TOPAS polymer optical fiber in the important low loss 850 nm spectral region. For the demonstration we have fabricated FBGs with resonance wavelength around 850 nm and 1550 nm in single-mode microstructured polymer optical fibers made of TOPAS and the conventional poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). Characterization of the FBGs shows that the TOPAS FBG is more than 50 times less sensitive to humidity than the conventional PMMA FBG in both wavelength regimes. This makes the TOPAS FBG very appealing for sensing applications as it appears to solve the humidity sensitivity problem suffered by the PMMA FBG.

Porous-core honeycomb bandgap THz fiber.

In this Letter we propose a novel (to our knowledge) porous-core honeycomb bandgap design. The holes of the porous core are the same size as the holes in the surrounding cladding, thereby giving the proposed fiber important manufacturing benefits. The fiber is shown to have a 0.35-THz-wide fundamental bandgap centered at 1.05 THz. The calculated minimum loss of the fiber is 0.25 dB/cm.

Broadband terahertz fiber directional coupler.

We present the design of a short broadband fiber directional coupler for terahertz (THz) radiation and demonstrate a 3 dB coupler with a bandwidth of 0.6 THz centered at 1.4 THz. The broadband coupling is achieved by mechanically downdoping the cores of a dual-core photonic crystal fiber by microstructuring the cores. This is equivalent to chemical downdoping but is easier to realize experimentally.

Bendable, low-loss Topas fibers for the terahertz frequency range.

We report on a new class of polymer photonic crystal fibers for low-loss guidance of THz radiation. The use of the cyclic olefin copolymer Topas, in combination with advanced fabrication technology, results in bendable THz fibers with unprecedented low loss and low material dispersion in the THz regime.We demonstrate experimentally how the dispersion may be engineered by fabricating both high- and low-dispersion fibers with zero-dispersion frequency in the regime 0.5-0.6 THz. Near-field, frequency-resolved characterization with high spatial resolution of the amplitude and phase of the modal structure proves that the fiber is single-moded over a wide frequency range, and we see the onset of higher-order modes at high frequencies as well as indication of microporous guiding at low frequencies and high porosity of the fiber. Transmission spectroscopy demonstrates low-loss propagation (< 0.1 dB/cm loss at 0.6 THz) over a wide frequency range.

Extensional Rheology of Entangled Polystyrene Solutions Suggests Importance of Nematic Interactions.

We compare the linear and nonlinear rheological response of three entangled polystyrene solutions with the same concentration of polymer, but diluted using different solvents. The three solutions have exactly the same physical tube model parameters when normalized to the same time scale. Although the three solutions behave identically in small amplitude oscillatory shear flow, they behave markedly different in large strain extensional flow. The experimental observations presented here directly demonstrate that the tube model and its governing parameters are insufficient to describe the nonlinear rheological behavior of entangled polymer solutions. We introduce a new hypothesis that relates the observed nonlinear behavior of three different polymer solutions to the existence of nematic interactions between polymer-solvent and polymer-polymer molecules.