Characterization of optical accelerometers based on UV-sensitive polymers

The design, simulation, fabrication, and characterization of quad-beam polymer optical accelerometers is presented in this paper. An applied acceleration causes a misalignment between the waveguides that comprise the structure. Two different geometries with different beam widths have been tested. Both of them show high mechanical and optical sensitivity and negligible cross sensitivities. Self-alignment structures for fast and accurate fiber-optic positioning have also been implemented in the device. Stable, simple, and robust technology that only requires two technological steps is also presented. Static characterization shows experimental optical sensitivities of at least 15.8 and 6.2 dB/g for each optical accelerometer.