Comparison of Silica and Sapphire Fiber SERS Probes Fabricated by a Femtosecond Laser

Author

Lei Yuan ; Xinwei Lan ; Jie Huang ; Hanzheng Wang ; Lan Jiang ; Hai Xiao

Author_Institution

Sch. of Mech. Eng., Beijing Inst. of Technol., Beijing, China

Volume

26

Issue

13

fYear

2014

fDate

1-Jul-14

Firstpage

1299

Lastpage

1302

Abstract

Different types of fibers were compared for construction of reflection-based surface-enhanced Raman-scattering (SERS) fiber probes. The probes were made by direct femtosecond (fs) laser micromachining of nanometer structures on the fiber endface and subsequent chemical plating of a thin layer of silver. Rhodamine 6G solutions were used to evaluate the performance of the SERS probes. In comparison with the silica fibers, the single-crystal sapphire fiber has much lower background Raman scattering. The fs laser is found effective to fabricate high-quality sapphire fiber SERS probes for detection of weak Raman signals in a reflection configuration.

Keywords

fibre optic sensors; high-speed optical techniques; laser beam machining; laser materials processing; micromachining; nanofabrication; nanophotonics; nanostructured materials; optical fibre fabrication; sapphire; silicon compounds; silver; surface enhanced Raman scattering; Ag; Al₂O₃; Raman signal detection; SiO₂; chemical plating; direct femtosecond laser micromachining; nanometer structures; reflection-based SERS fiber probes; rhodamine 6G solutions; sapphire fiber SERS probe fabrication; silica fiber SERS probe fabrication; silver thin layer; single-crystal sapphire fiber; surface-enhanced Raman-scattering; Fiber lasers; Optical fiber LAN; Optical fiber sensors; Optical fibers; Probes; Raman scattering; Silicon compounds; Fiber optic sensors; femtosecond laser; single-crystal sapphirefiber; surface enhanced Raman scattering;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Photonics Technology Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1041-1135

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LPT.2014.2321505

Filename

6809963