Micromanipulation and biological, material science, and medical applications often require to control or measure the forces asserted on small objects. Here, we demonstrate for the first time the microprinting of a novel fiber-tip-polymer clamped-beam probe micro-force sensor for the examination of biological samples. The proposed sensor consists of two bases, a clamped beam, and a force-sensing probe, which were developed using a femtosecond-laser-induced two-photon polymerization (TPP) technique. Based on the finite element method (FEM), the static performance of the structure was simulated to provide the basis for the structural design. A miniature all-fiber micro-force sensor of this type exhibited an ultrahigh force sensitivity of 1.51 nm μN⁻¹, a detection limit of 54.9 nN, and an unambiguous sensor measurement range of ~2.9 mN. The Young’s modulus of polydimethylsiloxane, a butterfly feeler, and human hair were successfully measured with the proposed sensor. To the best of our knowledge, this fiber sensor has the smallest force-detection limit in direct contact mode reported to date, comparable to that of an atomic force microscope (AFM). This approach opens new avenues towards the realization of small-footprint AFMs that could be easily adapted for use in outside specialized laboratories. As such, we believe that this device will be beneficial for high-precision biomedical and material science examination, and the proposed fabrication method provides a new route for the next generation of research on complex fiber-integrated polymer devices.

We demonstrated a novel fiber in-line Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) with a large fringe visibility of up to 17 dB, which was fabricated by misaligned splicing a short section of thin core fiber between two sections of standard single-mode fiber. Such a MZI could be used to realize simultaneous measurement of tensile strain and temperature. Tensile strain was measured with an ultrahigh sensitivity of −0.023 dB/μɛ via the intensity modulation of interference fringes, and temperature was measured with a high sensitivity of 51 pm/°C via the wavelength modulation of interference fringe. That is, the MZI-based sensor overcomes the cross-sensitivity problem between tensile strain and temperature by means of different demodulation methods. Moreover, this proposed sensor exhibits the advantages of low-cost, extremely simple structure, compact size (only about 10 mm), and good repeatability.

We propose and experimentally verify an innovative label-free optical fiber biosensor based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer for bovine serum albumin (BSA) concentration detection. The proposed fiber biosensor utilized a micro-cavity within a single-mode fiber to induce Mach-Zehnder interference. A remarkable feature of this biosensor is that external media can directly interact with the fiber core signal through microfluidic channels connected to the micro-cavity and sensor surface. The device was fabricated by means of femtosecond laser micromachining and chemical etching. A fiber interferometer of this type exhibits an ultrahigh refractive index sensitivity of −10,055 nm/RIU and a detection limit of 3.5 × 10⁻⁵ RIU. Different concentrations of BSA with an infinitesimally small refractive index difference can be clearly differentiated in situ by the interferential spectra of the structure. Experiments demonstrated the biosensor exhibited a BSA solution concentration sensitivity of −38.9 nm/(mg/mL) and a detection limit of 2.57 × 10⁻⁴ mg/mL, respectively. Moreover, this biosensor is a sub-microliter dose and ultrasensitive at the low concentrations detected in BSA, which make it a promising for biochemical applications such as DNA hybridization, cancer screenings, medicine examination and environmental engineering, etc.

A high-efficiency grating fabrication method was, for the first time, demonstrated to inscribe helical long period fiber gratings (H-LPFGs) in small numbers by means of twisting a standard single-mode fiber (SMF) during hydrogen-oxygen flame heating and then cutting the helical fiber into in series of sections. Each section of the helical fiber was a desired LPFG whose resonant wavelength, i.e. grating pitch, can be changed by adjusting the twist rate of the helical fiber. The H-LPFG inscribed in a standard SMF could be used to generate orbital angular momentum (OAM) modes, i.e. OAM+1 mode, with a purity of 91% and a conversion efficiency of 87% within a large wavelength range from more than the cutoff wavelength of a SMF, which is highly advantageous to all-fiber optical communications based on the OAM mode-division multiplexing technique.

An ultrasensitive magnetic field sensor based on a compact in-fiber Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) created in twin-core fiber (TCF) is proposed, and its performance is experimentally demonstrated. A section of TCF was spliced between two sections of standard single-mode fibers, and then a microchannel was drilled through one core of the TCF by means of femtosecond laser micromachining. The TCF with one microchannel was then immersed in a water-based ${\mathrm{Fe}}_3{\mathrm{O}}_4$ magnetic fluid (MF), forming a direct component of the light propagation path, and then sealed in a capillary tube, achieving a magnetic sensing element, which merges the advantages of an MZI with an MF. Experiments were conducted to investigate the magnetic response of the proposed sensor. The developed magnetic field sensor exhibits a linear response within a measurement range from 5 to 9.5 mT and an ultrahigh sensitivity of 20.8 nm/mT, which, to our best knowledge, is 2 orders of magnitude greater than other previously reported magnetic sensors. The proposed sensor is expected to offer significant potential for detecting weak magnetic fields.

Cancer is a serious health issue worldwide. Traditional treatment methods focus on killing cancer cells by using anticancer drugs or radiation therapy, but the cost of these methods is quite high, and in addition there are side effects. With the discovery of anticancer peptides, great progress has been made in cancer treatment. For the purpose of prompting the application of anticancer peptides in cancer treatment, it is necessary to use computational methods to identify anticancer peptides (ACPs). In this paper, we propose a sequence-based model for identifying ACPs (SAP). In our proposed SAP, the peptide is represented by 400D features or 400D features with g-gap dipeptide features, and then the unrelated features are pruned using the maximum relevance-maximum distance method. The experimental results demonstrate that our model performs better than some existing methods. Furthermore, our model has also been extended to other classifiers, and the performance is stable compared with some state-of-the-art works.