Miniature Optical Fiber Pressure Sensor With Exfoliated Graphene Diaphragm

This paper presents an integrated microcavity optical fiber pressure sensor using exfoliated ultrathin graphene atomic layers as a reflective surface to form a Fabry-Perot (F-P) interferometric structure. The fabrication was based on the focused-ion-beam (FIB) micromachining and dry exfoliated graphene transfer method, where the sensor was fabricated directly on a facet of a standard SMF-28 single-mode fiber with the core diameter of 8 μm and the cladding diameter of 125 μm. The air leakage from the cavity was negligibly small during the 30-min measurement time. The responsivity of pressure sensors, defined as the spectral shift of F-P fringes in response to the air pressure change, was achieved as large as 1.28 nm/mmHg at 1300-nm wavelength when using a diaphragm diameter of 20 μm. Demonstrated responsivity and compactness makes the sensor suitable for medical, environmental, and other applications. An analytical model was presented describing responsivity of an F-P pressure sensor with a thin diaphragm. It has predicted that reducing the diaphragm thickness below some critical value leads to the highest possible responsivity that no longer depends on the elastic properties or thickness of the diaphragm. This upper limit for the responsivity can be increased using the cavity shape other than a simple cylinder, while residual strength of the diaphragm results in reduced responsivity.