IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 21, NO.

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Relative Humidity Sensor Based on Tilted Fiber Bragg Grating With Polyvinyl Alcohol Coating
Yinping Miao, Bo Liu, Hao Zhang, Yuan Li, Haibin Zhou, Hua Sun, Weihua Zhang, and Qida Zhao
AbstractA relative humidity (RH) sensor based on tilted ber Bragg grating (TFBG) is proposed by utilizing polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as the sensitive cladding lm. RH increasing in the PVA coating will result in reduction of refractive index. Due to the TFBGs sensitivity to ambient refractive index, the spectral properties of PVA-coated TFBG are modied under exposure to different ambient humidity levels ranging from 20% to 98% RH. The transmission power of TFBG has different linear behaviors for two different humidity ranges (20%74% RH and 74%98% RH), and the sensitivity for each humidity range reaches as high as 2.52 and 14.947 dBm/%RH, respectively. Combining the advantages of optical ber grating and PVA as a smart material, this design involves simple conguration, low cost, compactness, a small degree of hysteresis, stability, and wide dynamic sensing range as well. Therefore, the sensor could be applied in real-time RH monitoring for normal as well as extremely humid environments. Index TermsOptical ber sensor, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) coating, relative humidity (RH) sensor, tilted ber Bragg grating (TFBG).

I. INTRODUCTION HE monitoring of the relative humidity (RH) of surrounding air is of great importance in many applications, such as the textile industry, medical facilities, goods preservation, weather forecasting, air conditioning in construction, and national defense studies. Thus the monitoring devices are of great signicance and have extensive development prospects. The advantages of optical ber humidity sensors have a few distinguished features such as electromagnetic immunity, high integration, multisensor integration, remote, and stable sensing. Moreover, they are convenient for real-time measuring operation. In the research and development of the humidity sensor, those characteristics have attracted much attention and some benecial frontier explorations have been carried out. Current ber-based approaches for RH sensing include evanescent eld [1][3], which is based on tapered ber with the mechanical strength being decreased due to modifying the geometrical structure, the use of plastic optical bers [4], ber Bragg gratings (FBGs) [5], [6], hollow core ber [7], and long-period gratings (LPGs) [8], [9], which could be severely inuenced by
Manuscript received September 30, 2008; revised November 21, 2008. First published February 03, 2009; current version published March 18, 2009. The work was supported by the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant 2006AA01Z217), by the National Natural Science Fund projects (Grant 60736039), by the Tianjin Key Project of Applied and Basic Research Programs (Grant 07ZCKFGX00200), and by the College Science Research Foundation under Grant 2006BA28. The authors are with the Institute of Modern Optics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China. Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LPT.2009.2013185

many kinds of perturbation with much higher temperature and bending cross-sensitivities. Each sensor mentioned above has its own advantage. However, refractive index information in these schemes is still wavelength encoded, restricting its direct employment in practical applications in which complex interrogation units are often required. Therefore a ready-to-acquire optical ber sensing scheme based on the optical power variations would be of great value. Recently, the tilted ber Bragg grating (TFBG), which possesses the merits of the FBG and LPG, has attracted considerable interest in sensing applications. The sensitivity of the TFBG to surrounding refractive index has led to extensive studies on their use as accurate refractive index sensor elements. Furthermore, it can be advantageously used in a lot of chemical and biochemical applications areas due to its special temperature property and distinctive cladding mode coupling which is very sensitive to environmental conditions [10][13]. In this letter, a novel RH sensor with high sensitivity based on the TFBG coated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is proposed. It allows interaction between the cladding modes and PVA for sensing the ambient humidity without damage to the ber. The uctuation of surrounding humidity will result in the refractive index variation of PVA. Owing to the TFBGs high sensitivity to ambient refractive index, the transmission spectrum of TFBG will vary and the coupling strength of cladding modes will also change from the low-order cladding modes accordingly. This RH sensor allows for a cost-effective demodulation process simply by optical power detection and it makes the on-line monitoring ambient humidity possible. II. EXPERIMENTATION The TFBGs were inscribed by a 248-nm KrF laser in singlemode H -load photosensitive ber by rotating the phase mask at a certain angle in the ber plane. Here, the effective tilted angle is about 5 and the effective length is 1.5 cm. The original transmission spectrum is shown in Fig. 1. PVA was selected as a suitable material with appropriate humid sensitivity. It could readily absorb and desorb water; moreover, a fast equilibrium with atmospheric moisture can be established. Its refractive index changes with different ambient humidity to affect the cladding-mode coupling of TFBG. PVA is proved to have good adherence, stability, and is able to form gels containing as little as 2- to 3-wt% PVA in water. Here, the PVA granules (dry) were mixed with demonized water to form a 5% (wt/wt) PVA solution. The humidity sensor was created by the direct dip-coated PVA onto the surface of TFBG. To achieve a reproducible and reliable approach, a number of experiments were carried out to produce a smooth and thin coating on the TFBG. The lm of 5 m in thickness was measured using a calibrated microscope. Both ends of the grating were xed to a polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) board to avoid any bend

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IEEE PHOTONICS TECHNOLOGY LETTERS, VOL. 21, NO. 7, APRIL 1, 2009

Fig. 1. Original transmission spectrum of the TFBG without coating.

Fig. 3. Evolution of transmission spectrum under different RH.

Fig. 2. Experimental setup of RH sensing test.

and strain being imposed on the grating. The TFBG-coated PVA was inserted into a homemade climatic chamber to test the RH response of the sensor. The humid environment ranging from 20% to 98% RH in the chamber was generated with a humidier. A commercially available electronic hygrometer was placed inside the chamber to give an approximate RH values and the humidity resolution is rated at 1% RH. The experimental temperature was maintained at 25 C during the experiments. A mini-fan was used to adjust and control the humid environment to equilibrium promptly. Light from a broadband source was launched into the TFBG sensor, the transmission spectrums of the TFBG sensor were monitored by the optical spectrum analyzer (OSA) with a resolution of 0.01 nm and the transmission power was measured by the photodetector. The whole experimental setup is shown in Fig. 2. III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The responses of PVA-coated TFBG were monitored under different humidity conditions. The on-line response of the sensor under different humidity levels is fast and the average response time is less than 2 s %RH. Fig. 3 shows its transmission spectrums within 15351565 nm when it was exposed to 32%, 65%, 80%, and 95% RH, respectively. The change of RH has an inuence on the transmission spectrum of the sensor. With the increase of humidity, a slight shift of the resonance wavelength towards the shorter wavelengths was noticed and the coupling strength of cladding modes will be enhanced starting from low-order modes. We believe that the sensing mechanism is primarily related to ambient refractive index while less to spectral absorption and morphological changes, due to water vapor accumulation. However, the variations of refractive index are dominated by the intrinsic material properties of the coating. PVA, like most proteins, consists of many more atoms than H O. The nominal refractive index value for the PVA lm is

Fig. 4. Relation between different RH and integrated optical transmission powers within 15351565 nm.

approximately 1.49. It is higher than that of water and the variation of refractive index is dependent on the water concentration. When the PVA-coated TFBG was exposed to various RH levels, PVA swells due to the hydrogen bonds formation with water. As the RH level increases, the water content in the PVA coating increases, thus causing an increase in the swelling of the PVA coating and resulting in a reduction in density, which will lead to a reduction in the refractive index of the coating. Hence, refractive index of PVA decreases with the increase of RH. The reason for such a variation trend of the cladding-mode coupling strength mentioned above is as follows: Each of the cladding modes of the TFBG can be characterized by rays whose angle with the ber normal decreases with the increase in order cladding mode number. For the same index of refraction of the external medium, lower order cladding modes have well-conned modal power. Thus, they have less interaction with the external medium. As the order of the cladding mode increases, a larger portion of the modal eld extends further into the ambient media. This leads to the high-order cladding mode of TFBG transmission spectrum being more sensitive to the change in index of refraction of the external medium. Fig. 4 gives the integrated optical transmission powers under different humidity with a wavelength range of 15351565 nm. With the increase of the humidity, a noticeable nonlinearity is observed and this is a physical process. This graph can be considered as two linear regions of 20%74% RH and 74%98% RH. It can be explain as follows: in the low humidity area (near (1.49) the 20%) where the ambient refractive index of

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and descending order. It is evident that, although there is a small degree of hysteresis, detection errors remain less than 0.56% RH. IV. CONCLUSION To summarize, a high-sensitivity RH sensor with good resolution, a small degree of hysteresis, and good repeatability has been demonstrated. PVA was used as the sensitive material due to its refractive index sensitivity to different RH levels. For the rst time, the coupling strength of cladding modes sensitive to ambient refractive index was employed in an optical-ber humidity sensor. The optical power interrogation method is simpler and more economical compared with complex spectroscopic methods based on wavelength detection. The responses of PVA-coated TFBG to various humidity levels ranging from 20% to 98% RH have been investigated. The transmission power of TFBG has different liner behaviors for two different humidity ranges (20%74% RH and 74%98% RH). The sensitivity of this humidity sensor reaches 2.52 and 14.947 dBm/%RH, respectively. Moreover, the sensor was found to be highly sensitive in the region of high humidity, especially between 86%98% RH. Its sensitivity is six times as great as relative lower humidity region of 20%74% RH. The RH sensor synthesizes the advantages of optical ber grating and PVA as a smart material with exibility in design, interchangeability, chemical long-term stability, and fast response, and could be applied in real-time RH monitoring for normal as well as extremely humid environments. REFERENCES
[1] L. Xu et al., Optical ber humidity sensor based on evanescent-wave scattering, Opt. Lett., vol. 29, pp. 11911193, 2004. [2] J. M. Corres, F. J. Arregui, and I. R. Matias, Design of humidity sensors based on tapered optical bers, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 24, no. 11, pp. 43294336, Nov. 2006. [3] I. R. Matias, F. J. Arregui, J. M. Corres, and J. Bravo, Evanescent eld ber-optic sensors for humidity monitoring based on nanocoatings, IEEE Sensors J., vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 8995, Jan. 2007. [4] S. Muto et al., A plastic optical bre sensor for real-time humidity monitoring, Meas. Sci. Technol., vol. 14, pp. 746750, 2003. [5] P. Kronenbery et al., Relative humidity sensor with optical ber Bragg gratings, Opt. Lett., vol. 27, pp. 13851387, 2002. [6] T. L. Yeo et al., Characterization of a polymer-coated bre Bragg grating sensor for relative humidity sensing, Sens. Actuators B, Chem., vol. 110, pp. 148155, 2005. [7] N. D. Rees et al., Optical ber long-period gratings with langmuirblodgett thin-lm overlays, Opt. Lett., vol. 27, pp. 686688, 2002. [8] W. M. Healy et al., Development of an optical for building envelopes ber-based moisture sensor, ventilation, humidity and energy, in Proc. 24th AIVC Conf. and BETEC Conf., Washington, DC, Oct. 14, 2003. [9] L. Wang et al., A relative humidity sensor using a hydrogel-coated long period grating, Meas. Sci. Technol., vol. 18, pp. 31313134, 2007. [10] C. F. Chan et al., Optical ber refractometer using narrowband cladding-mode resonance shifts, Appl. Opt., vol. 46, pp. 11421149, 2007. [11] G. Laffont et al., Tilted short-period bre-Bragg-grating-induced coupling to cladding modes for accurate refractometry, Meas. Sci. Technol., vol. 12, pp. 765770, 2001. [12] C. Caucheteur and P. Megret, Demodulation technique for weakly tilted ber Bragg grating refractometer, IEEE Photon. Technol. Lett., vol. 17, no. 12, pp. 27032705, Dec. 2005. [13] C.-L. Zhao, X. Yang, M. S. Demokan, and W. Jin, Simultaneous temperature and refractive index measurements using a 3 slanted multimode ber Bragg grating, J. Lightw. Technol., vol. 24, no. 2, pp. 879883, Feb. 2006.

Fig. 5. Hysteresis plot of the PVA-TFBG RH sensor in the humidity ranging from 20% to 98% RH in both ascending and descending order.

is higher than (about 1.45), the whole transmission spectrum can be almost tted to a smooth loss curve indicating the coupling to a lot of radiated modes. With the increase of the humidity ( 20%74% RH), the refractive index of PVA will decrease from 1.49 to about 1.42; the transmission condition of more and more cladding modes in the grating can be satised. They can gradually transmit in the grating and the coupling strength will be enhanced progressively. There are more and more dips with lower coupling strength appearing in the transmission spectrum. Moreover, if the original ambient refractive index is close to that of cladding, the reduction in refractive index should not cause any major changes in the dips. When the humidity changes from 72% RH to 98% RH (from 1.42 to about 1.34), the cladding modes are no longer radiated modes but become guide modes gradually, and their transmission intensity of the cladding-mode resonances increases progressively; i.e., the transmission power will increase by great degree. The sensitivity under different humid levels is analyzed and corresponding tting results are obtained. In the range of 20%74% RH, the linear t of corresponding transmission power ( ) and humidity variation ( ) is found to be with a condence factor of 0.99626 and the sensitivity reaches 2.52 dBm/%RH. With the humidity of 74%98% RH, the transmission power increases sharply, its trend can be demonstrated by the polynomial, and the . tting polynomial is is 0.99665. The results show that it has better The tness sensitivity in the high humidity region of 74%98% RH, especially during the higher humidity range of 86%98% RH, , where the tness . The slope is greater than the one of the lower humidity. Its sensitivity of 14.947 dBm/%RH is almost six times as much as that in the relative lower humidity region of 20%74% RH. The most signicant response makes the sensor very useful for high RH sensing. Hence, it can also help to solve problems in measuring high humidity with present RH measurement systems. In addition, the resolution of the sensor not only is determined by the resolution of the optical power meter but also is a function of the humidity and was found to be better than 0.004% above 74% RH, and better than 0.014% below 74% RH. The hysteresis curves of the sensors are shown in Fig. 5. The humidity level varies from 20% to 98% RH in both ascending