Indian Journal of Science and Technology
DOI: 10.17485/ijst/2015/v8i35/85348
Year: 2015, Volume: 8, Issue: 35, Pages: 1-5
Original Article
Z. Harith1,2,5*, N. Irawati 1,2, M. Batumalay2,4,5, H. A. Rafaie3, G. Yun II5, S. W. Harun2,4, R. M. Nor3 and H. Ahmad2,4
1Institute of Graduate Studies, University of Malaya - 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
2Photonics Research Centre, University of Malaya - 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
3Department of Physics, University of Malaya - 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
4Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Malaya - 50603, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
5INTI International University - 71800, Nilai, Malaysia
We demonstrate two simple relative humidity sensors using a tapered Plastic Optical Fiber (POF) and silica microfiber. The POF is tapered by chemical etching method whereby the fiber is immersed into acetone and polished by a sand paper to reduce the fiber’s waist diameter from 1 mm to about 0.4 - 0.5 mm. The silica microfibers were fabricated using flame brushing techniques. Both tapered fibers are then coated with zinc oxide (ZnO) nanostructures using sol-gel immersion on ZnO seeded and non-seeded fiber methods before it is used to sense relative humidity. It is found that the tapered POF coated with seeded ZnO performed better compared to tapered silica microfiber. The tapered POF coated with seeded ZnO based sensor has linearity and sensitivity of 94.41 % and 0.176 mV/%, respectively.
Keywords: Fiber Optic Sensor, Relative Humidity (RH) Sensor, Refractive Index (RI), Tapered Plastic Optical Fiber, Tapered Silica Microfiber, Zinc Oxide (ZnO)
Subscribe now for latest articles and news.