Graphene based new physics phenomena are leading to a variety of stimulating graphene-based photonic devices. In this study, the enhancement of surface evanescent field by graphene cylindrical cladding is observed, for the first time, by using a graphene-coated microfiber multi-mode interferometer (GMMI). It is found theoretically and experimentally that the light transmitting in the fiber core is efficiently dragged by the graphene, hence significantly enhancing the evanescent fields, and subsequently improving the sensitivity of the hybrid waveguide. The experimental results for gas sensing verified the theoretical prediction, and ultra-high sensitivities of ~0.1 ppm for NH(3) gas detection and ~0.2 ppm for H(2)O vapor detection are achieved, which could be used for trace analysis. The enhancement of surface evanescent field induced by graphene may pave a new way for developing novel graphene-based all-fiber devices with compactness, low cost, and temperature immunity.

A graphene-coated microfiber (GCM)-based hybrid waveguide structure formed by wrapping monolayer graphene around a microfiber with length of several millimeters is pumped by a nanosecond laser at ∼1550 nm, and multiorder cascaded four-wave-mixing (FWM) is effectively generated. By optimizing both the detuning and the pump power, such a GCM device with high nonlinearity and compact size would have potential for a wide range of FWM applications, such as phase-sensitive amplification, multi-wavelength filter, all-optical regeneration and frequency conversion, and so on.

In this Letter, a graphene-coated D-shaped fiber (GDF) chemical gas sensor is proposed and demonstrated. Taking advantage of both the graphene-induced evanescent field enhancement and the in-fiber multimode interferometer, the GDF shows very high sensitivity for polar gas molecule adsorptions. An extinction ratio of up to 28 dB within the free spectrum range of ~30  nm in the transmission spectrum is achieved. The maximum sensitivities for NH₃ and H₂O gas detections are ~0.04 and ~0.1  ppm, respectively. A hybrid sensing scheme with such compactness, high sensitivity, and online monitoring capabilities may pave the way for others to explore a series of graphene-based lab-on-fiber devices for biochemical sensing.