Magnetostrictive composite material-based polarimetric
heterodyning fiber-grating laser miniature
magnetic field sensor
Wei He (何 炜), Linghao Cheng (程凌浩)*, Qiang Yuan (袁 强), Yizhi Liang (梁贻智),
Long Jin (金 龙), and Bai-Ou Guan (关柏鸥)
Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China
*Corresponding author: chenglh@ieee.org
Received January 11, 2015; accepted March 26, 2015; posted online April 20, 2015
A novel fiber-optic magnetic field sensor is demonstrated based on a dual-polarization fiber-grating laser, which
is embedded in an epoxy resin-bonded magnetostrictive composite material with doped Terfenol-D particles. A
simple structure is designed to convert the magnetic field-induced strain to transversal stress, which is applied to
the fiber laser to produce beat note frequency changes for measurement purposes. The response of the proposed
sensor is measured, and shows quite a good directivity and linearity with a sensitivity of 10.5 Hz/μT to the
magnetic field. It also shows a large measurable range up to about 0.3 T.
OCIS codes: 060.2370, 280.3420.
doi: 10.3788/COL201513.050602.
Fiber-optic sensors for magnetic fields have been subject
to considerable research efforts for their advantages,
which include a large bandwidth, compact size, light-
weight, and immunity to electromagnetic interference.
Many mechanisms can be used to implement fiber-optic
magnetic field sensors, such as those based on the Faraday
effect, magnetic force, and so on
[1–4]
, among which magne-
tostrictive material-based implementations are very
popular. However, bulk magnetostrictive materials are
normally fragile and show a limited upper working fre-
quency, due to the strong eddy current at high frequencies.
For example, monolithic Terfenol-D is a well-known giant
magnetostrictive material. It shows high-performance
magneto mechanical properties for quasi-static (<10 Hz)
and low frequency (<10 kHz) applications, and has found
wide applications in sonar and actuator devices since the
1980s. However, for operations above a few kilohertz,
eddy-current losses show up and limit its application
significantly. Moreover, Terfenol-D is quite brittle, thus
rendering it difficult to use in machining and device fab-
rication. Therefore, to overcome these shortcomings, mag-
netostrictive composite materials are proposed to improve
performance
[5–7]
. Basically, a magnetostrictive composite
material can be fabricated by incorporating Terfenol-D
particles into a passive polymer matrix to form magneto-
strictive particulate composites
[8,9]
. The insulating
polymer layers between the Terfenol-D particles signifi-
cantly increase the resistivity of the composite material,
and hence reduce the eddy-current losses for high-
frequency applications. The polymer-based magnetostric-
tive composi tes are also much less brittle due to the
improved elastic modulus of the matrix, which makes
magnetostrictive composite materials easy for machining
and reshaping. Therefore, magnetostrictive composite ma-
terials have been attracting much attention and are being
used in more and more applications in recent years
[10,11]
.
To implement a fiber-optic magnetic sensor based on
magnetostrictive composite materials, the change in the
composite materials due to the applied magnetic field
should be translated onto a light wave for sensing.
Normally, this can be done by implementing an interferom-
eter, such as the popular homodyning schemes in various
applications
[12–14]
. Heterodyning schemes can also be used,
such as those schemes based on heterodyning fiber-grating
lasers
[1,3,15–17]
, which have demonstrated high sensitivity and
a wide dynamic range in many applications. A unique
feature of the heterodyning fiber-grating laser is that it pro-
duces two lasing modes with orthogonal polarizations that
can beat on a photo detector after a polarizer to generate a
radio-frequency beat signal that has a frequency equal to
the frequency difference between the two lasing modes.
The beat signal changes its frequency according to the bi-
refringence variation of the laser cavity
[18]
. Due to the huge
frequency of the light wave, a beat-frequency variation of a
megahertz order can result, due to an extremely weak bi-
refringence variation of 10
−8
in the laser cavity. Therefore,
the sensors based on the heterodyning fiber-grating laser
can be very sensitive, with a considerable compact package,
and permit a much easier and simpler signal extraction by
electronic signal processing.
Because the heterodyning fiber-grating laser is sensitive
to transversal stress, in this Letter, we demonstrate a
novel miniature fiber-optic magnetic field sensor by em-
bedding a heterodyning fiber-grating laser into an epoxy
resin-bonded magnetostrictive composite material with
Terfenol-D particles incorporated. When a transversal
magnetic field is applied, the magnetic field induces a
strain in the magnetostrictive composite material. A
mechanical structure is designed to convert this strain to
transversal stress, which is applied to the embedded het-
erodyning fiber laser to change the beat note frequency.
By discriminating this beat note frequency change, the
COL 13(5), 050602(2015) CHINESE OPTICS LETTERS May 10, 2015
1671-7694/2015/050602(4) 050602-1 © 2015 Chinese Optics Letters