A Miniature Fiber Tip Polystyrene Microsphere Temperature Sensor With High Sensitivity

Abstract A fiber-optic temperature sensor based on fiber tip polystyrene microsphere is proposed. The sensor structure can be formed simply by placing and fixing a polystyrene microsphere on the center of an optical fiber tip. Since polystyrene has a much larger thermal expansivity, the structure can be used for high-sensitive temperature measurement. By the illuminating of the sensor with a broadband light source and through the optical Fabry-Perot interference between the front and back surfaces of the polystyrene microsphere, the optical phase difference (OPD) or wavelength shift can be used for the extraction of temperature. Temperature measurement experiment shows that, using a fiber probe polystyrene microsphere temperature sensor with a spherical diameter of about 91.7 µm, a high OPD-temperature sensitivity of about −0.617 96 nm/°C and a good linearity of 0.991 6 were achieved in a temperature range of 20°C–70°C.