Fabricating optical fibre-top cantilevers for temperature sensing

In this paper, we propose techniques to fabricate micro-cantilevers onto the end of standard single mode optical fibres using a combination of picosecond laser machining and focused ion beam milling techniques and demonstrate their use as temperature sensors. Using this approach the cantilever can be pre-aligned with the core of the fibre during fabrication, therefore offering a stable and straightforward means of optically addressing the cantilever. The cantilever is designed to measure deflection over a range of 10 µm using a simple readout technique. A phase recovery algorithm is employed to reduce the interrogation error to around 2–3 nm. Finally, a temperature cycling experiment demonstrates that the cantilever could be used as a temperature sensor from room temperature to 500 °C with an average rms temperature error from 20 °C to 500 °C of ~±1.4 °C.