Materials and technologies of integrated-optics sensors

The demand for safety dictates, along with progress in video engineering, the development of sensor systems, especially in the area of industrial safety. A network of a large number of sensors is presented with a number of specific requirements: low price in mass production, compactness, effective interfacing with computer engineering, etc.
Optical sensors based on fiber lightguides or integrated-optical structures and created by planar technology usually meet these requirements. In combination with acousto-optical processors for primary processing, they are insensitive to electromagnetic noise, operate under conditions of fire hazard and in an explosive atmosphere, and are easy to integrate into territorially distributed sensor grids that monitor an object’s parameters in real time.
They also meet traditional requirements on sensors: when the reflection of light or high-absorption materials are used, the optical signal is formed in thin films of a substance, thereby ensuring high spatial and temperature resolution.
Success in the development of optical sensors suitable for mass industrial application depends most of all on the creation of new materials that not only possess sensitivity to the physical fields being measured, but are also compatible with existing technologies of fiber-optic lightguides or with the planar technology used in microelectronics. This makes it possible to substantially reduce the cost of the sensor when it is mass produced and maintains repeatability of its metrological characteristics. In this connection, comprehensive studies of the physical properties of the newly created optical materials and the integrated-optics structures based on them are needed in order to develop new sensors of the physical fields.