Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue of the journal Sensors, entitled “Advances in Design and Application of Optical Fiber Sensors”, aims to gather recent advancements in optical fiber sensors. Papers that focus on all aspects of the design and application of optical fiber sensors are welcome. The papers published in this Special Issue will contribute to the development of photonics and optics. This Special Issue will also provide a rapid publishing platform for scientific researchers to publish their innovative results.

We invite submissions on a wide range of advances in the design and application of optical fiber sensors, including but not limited to:

• Physical sensors;
• Chemical sensors;
• Medicine sensors;
• Biology sensors;
• Gas sensors;
• Artificial intelligence applications in optical fiber sensors;
• Novel sensing mechanisms and methods.

Prof. Dr. Hailiang Chen
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• optical fiber sensor
• surface plasmon resonance
• optical interference
• optical fiber grating
• artificial intelligence
• physical sensors
• chemical sensors
• medicine sensors
• biology sensors
• gas sensors

Title: Dynamic shape monitoring method of soft materials based on fiber Bragg grating arrays
Authors: Zhuoran Hu; Ziyan Zhao; Aoyan Zhang; Shuhan Fang; Zehai He; Defeng Zou; Gina Jinna Chen; Huanhuan Liu; Kunpeng Feng; Hong Dang; and Perry Ping Shum
Affiliation: 1State Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber and Cable Manufacture Technology, Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China. 2Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenzhen 518055, China. 3Key Laboratory of Non-destructive Testing and Monitoring Technology for Highspeed Transport Facilities, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, College of Automation Engineering, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China
Abstract: With the gradual maturation of soft materials applied to robots and actuators, the expectation for soft robots is not just about the ability to move but also measurability and controllability. In this paper, we embedded a fiber Bragg grating array into an easily processable, elastically controllable, and chemically resistant polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) soft body to monitor the curvature distribution of the PDMS material. Through mechanical analysis and experimental calibration of the FBG-PDMS heterogeneous composite structure, we found that the central wavelength of the FBG reflection spectrum exhibited a relaxation response to sudden changes in curvature due to the viscoelasticity of PDMS. To compensate for the shape measurement error due to the relaxation, we quantitatively controlled the shape of the FBG-PDMS structure utilizing a serpentine ruler, then recorded the responses of the FBG reflection spectrum with varied curvature changes. In practical measurements, we introduced a neural network to generalize the relationship between the relaxation process and the curvature change, thus supporting dynamic curvature analysis by surveying the FBG spectra over a very short period. The presented shape measurement method can balance accuracy and timeliness, thus enabling servo motion.

Title: Rapid Prototyping for Nanoparticle-Based Photonic Crystal Fiber Sensors
Authors: Michael Sherburne; Cameron Harjes; Benjamin Klitsner; Jonathan Gigex; Sergei Ivanov; Edl Schamiloglu; Jane Lehr
Affiliation: 1 Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory 2 Air Force Research Laboratory 3 Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies 4 University of New Mexico
Abstract: Nanotechnology has been creating a revolution in miniaturizing sensors. Such sensors can be used for radiation detection, temperature sensing, radio-frequency sensing, strain sensing, and more. At nanoscale comes the inherent issues in integrating such materials into sensing platforms. One such promising platform are photonic crystal fibers which can draw in optically sensitive nanoparticles or have its optical properties changed by specialized nanomaterials. However, testing these sensors at scale is difficult due to specialized equipment needed to integrate these photonic crystal fibers into optical fiber systems. Having a solution to enable rapid prototyping of new nanoparticle-based sensors in photonic crystal fibers would open up the field to a wider range of laboratories that could not have initially studied these materials in such a way before. This paper goes over improved processes in cleaving, drawing, and rapidly integrating nanoparticle-based photonic crystal fibers into optical system setups. The new capabilities have caused the following innovations: cleaving can now be done reliably, nanoparticles can be drawn at scale through photonic crystal fibers in a safe manner, and the new photonic crystal fiber mount is able to have a fine adjustment in increasing optical coupling before inserting into an optical system.