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A new double-taper microfiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MZI) biosensor is applied for Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus) detection. The microfiber MZI structure is fabricated by creating two tapers along a traditional single mode fiber (SMF) firstly and tapering the SMF sandwiched between two tapers into very small diameter (in the order of micrometers). The measured refractive index (RI) sensitivity of the microfiber MZI is up to 2731.1 nm/RIU in the RI range of 1.34 when the taper waist diameter was 10.2 µm, which is in good agreement with numerical simulation results by using the beam propagation method (BPM). The microfiber MZI functionalized with pig immunoglobulin (pig IgG) could be used to specifically binding to S. aureus. In experiment, the maximum wavelength shift of 1.408 nm was achieved when the microfiber biosensors were immersed into S. aureus with concentration of 7×10 1 CFU/mL. The limit of detection (LoD) of the microfiber biosensor for S. aureus is calculated as low as 11 CFU/mL. The proposed microfiber MZI biosensor has advantages of simple structure configuration, high sensitivity, good repeatability and specificity, wide detection range and fast detection response time (<30 minutes) and thus was demonstrated a good application prospect in food safety inspection, biochemical sensing, diseases and medical diagnostics.

A novel side-polished long-period fiber grating (LPFG) sensor was proposed and experimentally validated. Side-polished can provide a stronger evanescent field than traditional grating and bring superior sensitivity. The greater the side-polished depth, the higher the refractive index (RI) sensitivity. When d = 44 μm, the refractive index sensitivity reached 466.85 nm/RIU in the range of 1.3330 -1.3580, which is four-fold higher than LPFG prepared by electric-arc discharge (EAD) method. A graphene oxide (GO) nano-film is coated on the LPFG to make it realize high sensitivity relative humidity (RH) sensing. Humidity sensitivity reached -0.193 nm/%RH in the range of 40 -80% RH. In addition, sidepolished breaks the symmetry of the distribution of the crosssectional light field, which determines the ability to achieve vector curvature measurement. It shows good sensing performance in the same/opposite bending direction as the side polished surface. When the input light polarization is 90°, the average sensitivity reaches 5.03 and -5.9 nm/m -1 in the range of 0 -19.67 m -1 , respectively. This strongly indicates that the fabricated sensors show high sensitivity, low-cost materials, and robust performance and break the limitations of the EDA method to prepare gratings, which have good application potential for biomedicine and the field of construction.

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