Sensitivity enhancement of a humidity sensor based on poly(sodium phosphate) and poly(allylamine hydrochloride)

The particular behavior of poly(sodium phosphate) (PSP) when it is deposited by means of the spraying layer-by-layer (LbL) technique has been used here to enhance the response of optical fiber humidity sensors. The roughness of the PSP films varies depending on the concentration of the polymeric solutions. In this work, it is demonstrated that this special feature of PSP allows the fabrication of optical fiber humidity sensors with different responses. Particularly, multilayer thin-films made of 10^-3 and 10^-4 M PSP and poly(allylamine hydrochloride) (PAH) solutions have been studied and used for the fabrication of optical fiber interferometers sensitive to humidity. To our knowledge this is the first time that the spray-assisted LbL technique has been used for the fabrication of optical fiber sensors.