A relative humidity sensor based on 2-core fiber Michelson interferometer with end-face aluminium mirror

A relative humidity (RH) sensor based on in-fiber Michelson interferometer (MI) is proposed, which consists of a short piece of graded-index multimode fiber (GIMMF) followed by a 2-core fiber (2CF), whose end face is terminated by a thick aluminum film. The GIMMF excites cladding modes into the pigtail 2CF via the mismatched-core splicing interface. The core-cladding modes are reflected back by the aluminum film and recoupled to the core of lead-in SMF through the GIMMF. A well-defined interference pattern is obtained as the result of core-cladding mode interference. The experimental results show that a configuration with a 10 mm pigtail 2CF at a wavelength of 1552.78 nm has a good linear response to relative humidity with the sensitivity of – 0.044 dB/%RH in the range of 35–95%RH. Meanwhile, the selected monitoring peak provides a better temperature sensitivity of 65 pm/℃ in the range of 35 –85 ℃. In addition, the aluminum film is manufactured by physical vapor deposition (PVD), which greatly enhances the compactness of the film and improves the contrast of the interference fringes; the manufacturing method has high repeatability.