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Narrow bandwidth fiber-optic spectral combs for renewable hydrogen detection

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Abstract

Hydrogen sensors are of great importance to detect leakage in time because the hydrogen-air mixture is highly flammable. Based on optical fiber-based configurations reported so far, using palladium coating only does not meet stringent performance targets, such as fast response time and limited deactivation caused by poisoning. Here, a palladium-gold alloy-coated optical fiber hydrogen sensor, i.e., highly tilted fiber Bragg grating (TFBG), was proposed by using its narrow bandwidth cladding modes whose effective refractive index (ERI) extends to 1.0 where the gas measurement is possible, which led to faster specific hydrogen measurement response time (a shorter stabilization time during the association and dissociation phases less than 20 s and 30 s, respectively) and improved deactivation resistance (higher than 99% per test cycle). Meanwhile, the temperature cross-sensitivity can be eliminated via referencing the “target” spectral combs to the core mode. We are sure that this promising configuration extends research directions for rapid, repeatable and high deactivation-resistance in hydrogen gas detection.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 62035006, 61722505, 61975068, 62005101), Key Program of the Guangdong Natural Science Foundation (Grant No. 2018B030311006), Guangdong Outstanding Scientific Innovation Foundation (Grant No. 2019TX05X383), Program of the China Scholarship Council (Grant No. 201806780010), and Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) (Grant No. O001518F).

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Author notes

  1. Cai S S and Liu F have the same contribution to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China

    Shunshuo Cai, Runlin Wang, Yongguang Xiao, Kaiwei Li & Tuan Guo

  2. Department of Electronics, Carleton University, Ottawa, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Fu Liu

  3. Electromagnetism and Telecommunications Department, University of Mons, Mons, 7000, Belgium

    Christophe Caucheteur

Authors
  1. Shunshuo Cai
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  2. Fu Liu
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  3. Runlin Wang
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  4. Yongguang Xiao
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  5. Kaiwei Li
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  6. Christophe Caucheteur
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  7. Tuan Guo
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Correspondence to Tuan Guo.

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Cai, S., Liu, F., Wang, R. et al. Narrow bandwidth fiber-optic spectral combs for renewable hydrogen detection. Sci. China Inf. Sci. 63, 222401 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-020-3058-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11432-020-3058-2

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