Optical fiber magnetic field sensors with ceramic magnetostrictive jackets

Abstract

Optical fibers coated by magnetostrictive ceramic films were tested with a Mach-Zehnder interferometer in an open-loop mode. The sensors exhibited excellent linearity and good sensitivity. The response of ceramic-jacketed fibers was not affected by small dc fluctuations that are due to the linear behavior of tested ceramic coatings in low magnetic fields. Tested ceramic materials included magnetite, γ-Fe(2) O(3), nickel ferrite, and cobalt-doped nickel ferrite (NCF2) jackets. The latter showed the best performance. A minimum detectable field of 3.2 × 10(-3) A/m for optical fiber jacketed with 2-μm-thick and 1-m-long NCF2 material has been achieved. The capability of detecting magnetic fields as low as 2.6 × 10(-7) A/m with a 10-μm-thick cobalt-doped nickel ferrite jacket is proposed.

Optical Current Sensors for High Power Systems: A Review

“…For that an optical fiber is bonded to a sample, or by thin-film deposition with a magnetostrictive material. The most commonly used magnetostrictive sensing elements were optical fibers coated with nickel [43], metallic glasses such as Metglass 2605S2 or Vitrovac 40-60 [44][45][46][47] [48,49].…”

“…Optical fibers coated with magnetostrictive ceramic films were tested by Sedlar et al [49], by using a modified Mach-Zehnder interferometer operating in an open-loop configuration. The sensors exhibited excellent linearity and good sensitivity.…”

Metglas thin film based magnetostrictive transducers for use in long period fibre grating sensors

“…Few reports exist there in the literature describing the possible use of magnetostrictive transducers in fibre optic based sensors [19][20][21]. Sedlar et al [19] reported the magnetic field sensing properties of ferrite coated single mode optical fibres.…”

“…Sedlar et al [19] reported the magnetic field sensing properties of ferrite coated single mode optical fibres. Rengarajan and Walser [20] reported the fabrication of a high speed fibre optic sensor for magnetic field mapping.…”

A Magnetic Actuator for Fiber-Optic Applications

“…All-optical switches and attenuators enable routing of data without the need for optical to electrical conversion. Optical fiber based devices have also been widely used for optical amplitude modulator (Fang and Taylor 1994;Lee et al 1997;Matias et al 2001) and imaging (Boppart et al 1997;Nelson et al 1997;Sedlar et al 2000;Popovic et al 1996;Keplinger et al 2003). Variable fiber-optic-based devices have been developed with piezoelectric (Herding et al 2004), electrostatic (Hoffmann et al 1999;Cochran et al 2004), thermal (Nagaoka 1999;Bernstein et al 2004;Comtois et al 1997), and electromagnetic (Deeter 1995;Tearney et al 1996;Dhaubanjar 2006;Sendoh et al 2003) actuations.…”