IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO.

6, JUNE 2007 953

An Active Core Fiber-Optic Temperature Sensor Using an Eu(III)-Doped

Sol-Gel Silica Fiber as a Temperature Indicator
Haiquan Guo and Shiquan Tao

Abstract—An active core fiber-optic temperature sensor has

been developed by using an Eu(III)-doped sol-gel silica fiber as a
temperature indicator and has been tested for sensing temperature
in the range from 80 C to 500 C. The fluorescence of Eu(III)
doped inside the sol-gel silica fiber was excited with a simple LED
with peak wavelength at 420 nm and the fluorescence intensity was
recorded as a sensing signal. The fluorescence intensity decreases
with the increase of temperature. In the temperature range from
140 C to 300 C, the attenuation of the fluorescence intensity
of the fiber-optic sensor in decibel has a linear relationship with
temperature.
Index Terms—Eu(III) fluorescence, fiber-optic sensor, sol-gel
silica, temperature sensor. Fig. 1. A schematic structure of a laboratory setup for testing the fiber-optic
temperature sensor.

T EMPERATURE is an important parameter that can affect

the physical and chemical properties of all materials. It
is important to precisely measure temperature in scientific re-
search and industry process control [1]–[3]. Fiber-optic temper-
ature sensors using fluorescence from the sensor head have at-
tracted a lot of scientists’ attention because of their small size,
intrinsic immunity to electromagnetic interference, and wide
dynamic range [4]–[6]. The reported fluorescence-based fiber-
optic temperature sensors were designed based on the detection
of the fluorescence lifetime or fluorescence intensity. For the
fiber-optic temperature sensors designed on the basis of life-
time, the precision of the detected temperature depends on the
curve fitting procedure for estimation of the lifetime [4]. Gener-
ally, the relationship of lifetime and temperature cannot be de-
scribed by a simple mode [7]–[12]. Moreover, fluorescence life-
time-based temperature sensors require much more complicated
instrument, such as pulsed light source and fast response elec-
tronics for microsecond level signal detection and processing
[13]. In this paper, we report an Eu(III)-doped silica fiber tem-
perature sensor based on the measurement of fluorescence inten-
sity. Using a simple LED as an excitation light source, the pre-
sented fiber sensor is much simpler in structure. Without curve
fitting, this method is more straightforward.
An Eu(III)-doped silica fiber was prepared by using a sol-gel
process developed in our laboratory [14], [15]. In preparing the
Eu(III)-doped silica fiber, a 1.0 g/ml Eu(III) nitrate aqueous
solution was added to an ester of a silicic acid (tetraethyl or-
thosilicate, TEOS) according to volume ratio (TEOS:Eu(NO )
Manuscript received July 24, 2006; revised September 29, 2006; accepted
October 4, 2006. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Department of
Energy under Cooperative Agreement DEFC2604NT42230. The associate ed-
itor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was
Prof. Michael Pishko.
The authors are with the Institute for Clean Energy Technology, Mississippi
State University, Starkville, MS 39759 USA (e-mail: tao@icet.msstate.edu).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2007.896557
1530-437X/$25.00 © 2007 IEEE
). TEOS was completely hydrolyzed
by adding two drops of 2 M nitric acid after 1 h vigorously stir-
ring. The obtained clear solution was filled inside a microanal-
ysis Tygon tubing with an inner diameter 1.3 mm for gelatiniza-
tion for one week. The formed fiber gel was pushed out of the
tube by pushing water through the Tygon tube with a syringe.
The Eu(III)-doped silica gel fiber was air-dried. The obtained
transparent glass-like fiber was then placed inside a tempera-
ture-controllable tube furnace, while air flowing through the fur-
nace tube. The fiber was preheated at 200 for 2 h, and then
heated at 600 for 6 h. By the heat treatment, the organic
materials were removed so that the microstructure of the fiber
will not be destroyed during the later test process. Also, the eu-
ropium nitrate was decomposed and became europium oxide.
The fiber was shrinked during the heating process and the di-
ameter of the heat treated fiber was around 300 .
The preheated Eu(III)-doped silica fiber with length 0.8 cm
was connected with two gold-jacketed silica optical fibers by a
silica capillary tube with a ceramic fiber holder, as described in
Fig. 1. The ceramic fiber holder with the silica fibers was then
deployed into a ceramic tube, which is inserted into the split
tube furnace as described above. Light from a 420 nm LED was
focused into the free end of one of the gold-jacketed silica op-
tical fibers by using a quartz lens. The light signal emerged from
the free end of the second gold-jacketed silica optical fiber was
monitored with an optical fiber compatible UV/Vis spectrom-
eter (SD 2000, OceanOptic Inc, Dunedin, FL). During testing
of the response of the Eu(III)-doped silica fiber to temperature,
the split furnace was heated from room temperature (23 ) to
500 step-by-step, and the fluorescence intensity at 615 nm
was monitored by the UV-Vis spectrometer.
The Eu(III)-doped silica fiber emits fluorescence with peak
emission wavelength at 615 nm, which can be assigned as
the f-f electronic transition [16]. With temperature
increasing, the fluorescence signal decreased. The relationship

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954 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 7, NO. 6, JUNE 2007

source. As temperatures increase, the fluorescence intensity of

the Eu(III)-doped silica fiber decreases. An advantage of this
fiber-optic sensor is that it can test either a single point or over a
large distance by changing the length of the Eu(III)-doped silica
fiber. Compared with fluorescence lifetime-based temperature
detection techniques, this sensor is much simpler in structure
and low-cost. In the temperature range from 140 to 300 ,
the attenuation of fluorescence intensity of the fiber-optic sensor
has a linear relationship with temperature. In practical applica-
tion, a reference fiber and a second photodiode are needed to
monitor potential LED drift.

Fig. 2. The relationship of the fluorescence intensity emitted from an
Europium-doped silica fiber with temperature.
of fluorescence intensity at 615 nm with temperature in the
tested region from 80 to 500 is shown in Fig. 2.
Fluorescence emission is a spontaneous emission process. An
excited fluorophore molecule can drop back to its ground state
through processes in either radiation emission or collision with
another molecule. These two processes are in equilibrium for
a system at a certain temperature. The temperature change will
change the frequency of collision, and therefore shifts the equi-
librium of the two processes. This shift results in a change of
fluorescence intensity. An increase in temperature causes an in-
crease in the collision frequency, so that results in fast decay of
fluorescence intensity.
It can be found out that in the temperature range from 140 C
to 300 C, the relationship of fluorescence intensity and temper-
ature follows (1):
(1)
A linear calibration curve for this temperature range can be
obtained by using the attenuation of the fluorescence signal in
decibel (dB) as a sensing signal [11]. dB is defined as (2)
(2)
From (1) and (2), we can get the linear relationship of dB and
temperature in the temperature range from 140 to 300 as
(3)
In summary, we have developed a fiber-optic temperature
sensor by detecting the fluorescence intensity of Eu(III) doped
in a silica fiber. A simple LED was used as an excitation light
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