A Passive Elastic Fiber-Optic Sensor With Embedded Triboluminescent Materials for Portable Control Application

Abstract

In recent years, elastic optical fibers have garnered significant attention for their emerging applications in biomedical engineering, intelligent sensing systems, photoelectric sensing and wearable robots. Concurrently, triboluminescent (TL) materials have exhibited notable capabilities in the domains of sensing indication and structural integrity assessment. This study reports the development of a self-powered triboluminescent-photonic sensor system through europium(III) tetra (dibenzoylmethanate) triethanolamine (EuD<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">4</sub>TEA), manganese(II) bis(triphenylphosphine oxide)dibromide (Mn(Ph<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub>PO)<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub>Br<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub>), and copper(I) thiocyanate pyridine triphenylphosphine (Cu(NCS)(py)<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub>(PPh<sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sub>)) three materials within a multi-core elastomeric waveguide architecture. The device employs polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS, n=1.41) and poly(dimethyl diphenyl siloxane) (PDMDPS, n=1.46) to construct an elastic optical fiber with three distinct photonic channels exhibiting Young’s modulus of 1.2 MPa and elongation at break >300%. This technology provides a new method for developing next-generation photonic sensors in terms of power autonomy and mechanical compliance. In addition, this study demonstrates the implementation of a novel passive sensor device as the interface for a portable control system. By using TL materials and multi-channel elastic fibers, we have successfully developed a novel passive sensor device with self-powered, multi-channel transmission and high flexibility.