Hollow core negative curvature fibres (NCFs) are a relatively new class of microstructured optical fibre with potential applications in areas such as the delivery of high power laser light and gas sensing. For sensing, it is necessary for the measurand to interact with the guided mode. To facilitate this, a novel femtosecond laser-based machining protocol has been developed that allows the precision sculpting of access slots into the NCF core along the length of the fibre. The process is a direct-write process using a digitally defined scanning strategy with no need for physical masks or additional processing such as wet etchants and/or focussed ion beam machining. Due to the inherent flexibility of the machining strategy and the high level of control over the depth of material removal, it is likely that this new technique will be transferable to a wide range of microstructured fibres.

Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) can be combined with optical fibers (OFs) to create various sensor configurations, yielding low-cost and highly sensitive extrinsic and intrinsic sensors. In this work, an MIP-based extrinsic optical fiber sensor is obtained by two silica OFs connected via an optical waveguide using an MIP as a core of micrometer size (micro OF-MIP-OF sensor). The proposed sensing approach can be used only with MIP receptors and implements an intensity-based sensor configuration. MIPs present several advantages over bio-receptors and can be exploited to realize novel sensing methods. The MIP used in this work is specifically designed for 2-furaldehyde (2-FAL) detection, and the experimental results demonstrate that the micro-probe performs well in terms of sensitivity and selectivity, with capabilities applicable to several application fields. In particular, a nanomolar detection range, from 1.5 nM to 150 nM, has been achieved. Moreover, the results are comparable to or better than those of other previously proposed MIP optical fiber sensors for 2-FAL, which employ more complex sensing principles or fabrication steps.

Fiber sensors based on Bragg gratings technology have been proposed for many different engineering applications. Novel applications on hemodynamic evaluation, wine monitoring and lithium batteries performance studies will be presented.

One of the main challenges for fibre optic based sensing is robust operation in the mid-infrared (mid-IR) region. This is of major interest because this wavelength region is where the characteristic absorption spectra for a wide range of molecules lie. However, due to the high absorption of silica (above 2 μm), mid-IR sensors based on solid core silica fibres are not practical. Of the many alternatives to solid silica fibres, hollow core microstrutured optical fibres are being explored and show great promise. One relatively new fibre, the hollow core negative curvature fibre (NCF) is promising for novel optical devices due to the simple structure (in comparison to other microstructured fibres) in combination with a hollow core which enables low loss mid-IR infrared guidance in a silica based fibre. In this paper, an all silica NCF that is post-processed with a fs laser, in order to increase access to the hollow core, is presented with acceptable loss and significant potential for mid-IR gas sensing.