Recent progress in gas detection with hollow-core microstructured optical fibers (HC-MOFs) and direct absorption/photothermal interferometry spectroscopy are reported. For direct-absorption sensors, the issue of mode interference noise is addressed and techniques to minimize such a noise are experimentally demonstrated. Large-scale drilling of hundreds of low-loss micro-channels along a single HC-MOF is performed, and reduction of diffusion-limited response time from hours to ~40 s is demonstrated with a 2.3-m-long HC-MOF. For photothermal inteferometry sensors, novel detection configurations based on respectively a Sagnac interferometer and an in-fiber modal interferometer are experimentally demonstrated. The Sagnac configuration avoids the need for complex servo-control for interferometer stabilization while the in-fiber configuration simplifies the detection, reducing the size and cost of the sensor system. Sub ppm gas detection can be achieved easily with photothermal interferometry HC-MOF sensors but is difficult to achieve for direct-absorption sensors with the current commercial HC-MOFs.

We propose and demonstrate a pressure sensor based on a micro air bubble at the end facet of a single mode fiber fusion spliced with a silica tube. When immersed into the liquid such as water, the air bubble essentially acts as a Fabry-Pérot interferometer cavity. Such a cavity can be compressed by the environmental pressure and the sensitivity obtained is >1000 nm/kPa, at least one order of magnitude higher than that of the diaphragm-based fiber-tip sensors reported so far. The compressible Fabry-Pérot interferometer cavity developed is expected to have potential applications in highly sensitive pressure and/or acoustic sensing.

We present a type of phase-shifted fiber Bragg gratings based on an in-grating bubble fabricated by femtosecond (fs) laser ablation together with a fusion-splicing technique. A microchannel vertically crossing the bubble is drilled by fs laser to allow liquid to flow in or out. By filling different refractive index (RI) liquid into the bubble, the phase-shift peak is found to experience a linear red shift with the increase of RI, while little contribution to the change of phase shift comes from the temperature and axial strain. Therefore, such a PS-FBG could be used to develop a promising tunable optical filter and sensor.

Highly birefringent (Hi-Bi) microfiber-based fiber loop mirrors (FLMs) were studied for tunable comb filters and refractive index (RI) sensors. The use of two cascaded Hi-Bi microfibers instead of a single microfiber allows more flexibility in controlling the transmission/reflection characteristics of the FLM. The length of Hi-Bi microfibers is of the order of centimeters, one or even more than two orders of magnitude shorter than the conventional Hi-Bi fiber-based FLM devices. The transmission/reflection spectra are sensitive to the RI surrounding the microfibers, and RI sensitivity of $\mathrm{20,745}\mathrm{nm}/\mathrm{RIU}$ was experimentally demonstrated.

Optical fiber acoustic sensors with miniature size and high sensitivity are attractive to develop compact photoacoustic spectroscopy. Here, a compact photoacoustic gas sensor was demonstrated by utilizing a diaphragm-based fiber-optic Fabry-Perot cavity as both the acoustic sensor and the multipass cell. A nanoscale graphite film was used as the flexible diaphragm to increase the acoustic sensitivity of the Fabry-Perot cavity and the cavity inner surface was coated with highly-reflective Au film to form a multipass cell for amplification of the photoacoustic signal. With a laser power of 20 mW at 1532.8 nm, the sensor demonstrated a low detection limit of ∼ 50 ppb for C₂H₂ gas with an integration time of ∼ 100 s. The optical fiber photoacoustic gas sensor with a millimeter-scale diameter and ppb-level detection limit is promising for trace gas sensing in various areas including industrial process and environmental monitoring.

Thermal monitoring of the long-track transmitter (Tx) magnetic mechanism of an industrial dynamic wireless power transfer (DWPT) system is necessary for its reliable operation. This paper proposes an optical fiber composite winding (OFCW) for in-situ thermal monitoring of the long-track Tx mechanism. Multichannel optical fibers are compounded on the Tx winding wire, which forms a composite structure, to detect the internal thermal distribution of the whole long-track Tx with fast response and high spatial resolution. A simplified optimization method based on magnetic and temperature field distribution characteristics is then studied to obtain a specific OFCW layout for rapid hotspot measurement and application extensions. Finally, an OFCW-based scaled-down DWPT prototype is established, and the experimental results with accurate thermal monitoring under different operating states confirm the feasibility and effectiveness of the OFCW.