Ultrahigh Sensitivity Fiber-Optic Fabry-Perot Interferometric Acoustic Sensor Based on Silicon Cantilever

Detection of weak acoustic signals is of great significance. To achieve ultrahigh sensitivity acoustic detection, a silicon cantilever-based fiber-optic acoustic sensor (FOAS) formed by a Fabry-Perot interferometric structure is proposed in this work. Theoretical analysis and finite element analysis are used to assist the sensor design. The cantilever is fabricated by the microelectro-mechanical system (MEMS) processing technology on a silicon-on-insulator (SOI) wafer. A white light interference (WLI) demodulation system based on an amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) source is used to demodulate the cavity length of the sensor. The acoustic pressure sensitivity of the sensor was measured to be 1.753 mu m/Pa at a frequency of 1 kHz and 28.75 mu m/Pa at the resonance frequency of the cantilever. Experimental results indicated that the minimum detectable pressure (MDP) level of the fabricated sensor was 0.21 mu Pa/Hz(1/2) at 1 kHz, which is the lowest reported value. The silicon-based FOAS proposed in this article demonstrates its ability to detect ultraweak acoustic signals due to its extremely high sensitivity.