Fiber optic-based chemical sensors are created by coating fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) with the glassy polymer cellulose acetate (CA). CA is a polymeric matrix capable of localizing or concentrating chemical constituents within its structure. Some typical properties of CA include good rigidity (high modulus) and high transparency. With CA acting as a sensor element, immersion of the gratings in various chemical solutions causes the polymer to expand and mechanically strain the glass fiber. This elongation of the fiber sections containing the grating causes a corresponding change in the periodicity of the grating that subsequently results in a change in the Bragg-reflected wavelengths. A high-resolution tunable fiber ring laser interrogator is used to obtain room-temperature reflectance spectrograms from two fiber gratings at two different wavelengths -1540nm and 1550nm. The graphical representation from this device enables the display of spectral shape, and not merely shifts in FBG central wavelength, thereby allowing for more comprehensive analysis of how different physical conditions cause the reflectance profile to move and alter overall form. Wavelength shifts on the order of 1 to 80 pm in the FBG transition edges and changes in spectral shape are observed in both sensors upon immersion in a diverse selection of chemical analytes.

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