FigFab: Fibre Bragg grating fabrication and collaborative research at Swinburne University Available to Purchase

Fibre Bragg gratings can be used to perform basic optical functions, such as reflection or filtering, in a highly efficient, low-loss manner within the fibre waveguide structure. As a result, they represent a key element in many optoelectronic systems, with important applications in the fields of optical communications and optical fibre sensing. Fibre Bragg gratings are particularly attractive for measuring temperature or strain distributions, because the wavelength dependence of the reflection renders the sensor self-referencing. The grating typically has a period smaller than 0.5 µm, which is written directly into the core of a photosensitive optical fibre by exposure to an interference pattern from an ultraviolet laser beam. A consortium consisting of Swinburne University of Technology, Defence Science and Technology Organisation and Monash University has recently set up a state-of-the-art Bragg grating writing system. This paper describes the grating inscription method and reviews some of the applications currently under development. Research topics within the consortium include biomedical sensing, in-situ health monitoring of repairs on airframes and strain profiling of composite and aircraft structures.