Ultra-High-Sensitivity, Miniaturized Fabry-Perot Interferometric Fiber-Optic Microphone for Weak Acoustic Signals Detection

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 18; p. 6948
• Main Authors: Wu, Guojie, Li, Haie, Ye, Hongxin, Gong, Zhenfeng, Ma, Junsheng, Guo, Min, Chen, Ke, Peng, Wei, Yu, Qingxu, Mei, Liang
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Acoustics; Algorithms; Design; Electromagnetism; Equipment and supplies; Fabry-Perot; Fiber optics; fiber-optic microphone (FOM); Graphene; Interferometry; Manufacturing; Microphones; Optics; Sensitivity; Signal to noise ratio; Silicon; Simulation; Spectrum analysis; Stainless steel; weak acoustic signals detection; United States > US
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22186948

An ultra-high-sensitivity, miniaturized Fabry-Perot interferometric (FPI) fiber-optic microphone (FOM) has been developed, utilizing a silicon cantilever as an acoustic transducer. The volumes of the cavity and the FOM are determined to be 60 microliters and 102 cubic millimeters, respectively. The FOM has acoustic pressure sensitivities of 1506 nm/Pa at 2500 Hz and 26,773 nm/Pa at 3233 Hz. The minimum detectable pressure (MDP) and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the designed FOM are 0.93 μPa/Hz1/2 and 70.14 dB, respectively, at an acoustic pressure of 0.003 Pa. The designed FOM has the characteristics of ultra-high sensitivity, low MDP, and small size, which makes it suitable for the detection of weak acoustic signals, especially in the field of miniaturized all-optical photoacoustic spectroscopy.