SBIR-STTR Award

Recently NZ Applied Technologies (NZAT) has successfully coated on standard single-mode optical fibers with resistive, piezoelectric, magnetostrictive materials such as Ti/Pt, ZnO, PZT, PLZT, FeCo and Terfenol-D. This technology opens a new area for fiber-optic sensor applications by using the functions provided by these thin film coatings. For examples, resistive coatings can be used to heat an optical fiber, while piezoelectric coatings can be used to strain the fiber. Localized changes in the fiber waveguiding properties can be achieved by electrically activating the fiber coating. These coated fibers show promise for applications such as optical phase shifters, modulators and dynamic fiber Bragg gratings (DFBG) with tunable reflectivity. In this proposal, we will use the coating technique developed by NZ Applied Technologies (NZAT) to demonstrate high sensitive electric field fiber-optic sensors, by combining the advantages of fiber optic sensors with active thin films coatings. The sensitivity of an FBG sensor is expected to be significantly enhanced by using a piezoelectric coating. Anticipated Benefits and

Potential Commercial Applications:
Low cost and high performance fiber optic electric field sensors have a broad range of military and civil applications such as power cable monitoring, voltage sensing and underwater electric field detection.