Highly Sensitive Temperature Fiber Sensor Based on Mach-Zehnder Interferometer

We propose a highly sensitive temperature fiber sensor based on a Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI). The MZI is composed of a piece of no-core fiber (NCF), a single-mode fiber (SMF), and a fiber taper (FT) structure. To accomplish high sensitivity, the component was immersed in a material with high thermo-optic coefficient (TOC). The experimental results showed that a high temperature sensitivity of 1.56 nm/degrees C was achieved for surrounding material with a refractive index (RI) of 1.45. The presented sensor has numerous advantages, for instance, extremely high sensitivity, easy fabrication, simple structure, compact size, and in-line applications.