Optofluidic Bragg Fiber Sensor Applications: Fuel Adulteration Sensor (Perceiving in Chemically Diverse Environments)

Acquiring a pleasant smell in environments with a high degree of chemical complexity has been a difficult task up until now. This chapter centers on enhancing and documenting the efficiency of optofluidic Bragg fibers (BFs) artificial noses. These noses are specifically engineered to measure the proportion of an impure pseudo-binary mixture of water-containing single-alcohol fuel, with the measurement relying on temperature. The objective entails utilizing mathematical models to accurately forecast the behavior of an optofluidic BFs sensor system that contains geometrical flaws. This is accomplished by introducing a lack of homogeneity in the central region of periodic cylindrical Bragg reflectors. The simulation of a multilayer concentric hollow-core BFs structure utilizes a cylindrical coordinate system. The simulation is conducted using Hankel functions (HFs) and the transfer matrix method (TMT). The fluctuation in refractive index (RI) of the contaminated pseudo-binary mono-alcohol fuel is linked to the temperature-dependent molar concentration. Multiple theories, such as the Dale-Gladstone and Lorentz-Lorenz models, are utilized to predict this correlation. The study noticed a sharp and well-defined peak in signal transmission, with a width of 0.1 nm at half of its highest intensity. This peak appeared in the photonic bandgap and showed a strong response to changes in the refractive index of the optofluidic core, particularly near a structural defect cavity. The proposed sensor exhibits a temperature-dependent maximum sensitivity of 1057.32 nm/RIU specifically for ethanol fuel, as opposed to methanol fuel, under different weather conditions. Furthermore, a comparison is drawn between a static temperature sensor based on surface plasmons. The proposed optofluidic BFs mono-alcohol fuel adulteration sensor device demonstrates enhanced sensing performance metrics, encompassing quality parameters and detection accuracy. This is attributed to the output signal’s FWHM (full width at half maximum), which is notably brief at approximately 0.1 nm.