IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 18, NO.
24, DECEMBER 15, 2018
Flexible Linear and Angular Displacement
Sensor Based on a Gradient Guided-
Mode Resonance Filter
Yen-Chieh Wang and Cheng-Sheng Huang
Abstract— This paper reports a method for micrometer-scale
linear and angular displacement measurement based on a gradi-
ent grating period guided-mode resonance (GGP-GMR) filter.
When the filter is mounted on a moving or rotating object,
the displacement on the object can be observed through the
changes in the resonant wavelength, which are detected by the
GGP-GMR filter. In this paper, the GGP-GMR filter comprised
grating periods from 250 to 550 nm with 2-nm increments.
Each period comprised 100 repeated cycles, resulting in a total
length of 6 mm. For linear displacement, we achieved an average
sensitivity of 67 nm/mm for a detection range of 6 mm and
a theoretical limit of detection of 3 µm. To demonstrate the
measurement of angular displacement, the GGP-GMR filter was
attached to a cylinder with a diameter of 8 cm. The experimental
results revealed an average sensitivity of 51.7 nm/° for a range
of 7° and an experimental limit of detection of 0.002°.
Index Terms— Displacement measurement, sensor, guided-
mode resonance, subwavelength structure, bandstop filter.
I. I NTRODUCTION
P OSITION sensors such as linear and angular displacement
sensors are vital for various applications. In addition
to displacement, physical quantities, such as strain, velocity,
acceleration, force, torque, pressure, and vibration, can be
determined on the basis of physical laws and mathemat-
ical models. Among the various types of displacement
sensors, optical displacement sensors offer advantages, includ-
ing immunity to electromagnetic interference, high sensitiv-
ity, low cost, compact size, and multiplexing capability. For
nonplanar surface measurement, sensors such as fiber optical
sensors can have flexible and bendable structures. In terms
of sensitivity, optical sensors can conduct measurements on
millimeter, micrometer [1]–[8], and nanometer [9], [10] scales
depending on the type of sensor.
Fabry–Perot (FP) cavities are commonly used for high-
resolution displacement measurement. Different implementa-
tions have been realized to achieve submicrometer resolution.
To achieve high-quality resonance, Suh et al. [9] proposed
Manuscript received September 3, 2018; revised October 5, 2018; accepted
October 5, 2018. Date of publication October 10, 2018; date of current
version November 16, 2018. This work was supported by the Ministry
of Science and Technology, Taiwan, under Grant MOST 106-3114-E-009-
004 and Grant 106-2221-E-009-120. The associate editor coordinating the
review of this paper and approving it for publication was Prof. Sheng-Shian Li.
(Corresponding author: Cheng-Sheng Huang.)
The authors are with the Mechanical Engineering Department, National
Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan (e-mail: jackwang40729@
gmail.com; csh@nctu.edu.tw).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2018.2875082
1558-1748 © 2018 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
9925
using two photonic crystal slabs as highly efficient reflec-
tors and obtained subnanometer resolution for out-of-plane
displacement with a detection range of 250 nm based on
simulation results. Furthermore, by using a fiber optical FP
sensor with sophisticated signal processing, Smith et al. [10]
achieved a resolution of 2 pm.
Various optical sensors have been proposed and successfully
demonstrated for millimeter- to micrometer-scale displace-
ment. Among these, fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) with various
designs and sensor implementations are among the most
popular. By attaching an FBG on the side of a cantilever beam
with an elaborately designed orientation, Dong et al. [1] and
Ng et al. [2] have demonstrated that the Bragg wavelength can
be kept constant when the bandwidth is gradually increased
along with the transverse displacement at the end of the
cantilever beam. By bending the long period fiber grating [3]
and using a tilted FBG [4], the shift of the Bragg wavelength
can be correlated with the transverse displacement. In all
the examples, the displacement is normal to the fiber axial
direction, which is referred to as “out of plane” in the
current study. Moreover, Zou et al. [5] combined a spring
and an FBG to increase the sensitivity for measurement of
in-plane displacement (i.e., displacement along the fiber axial
direction).
Interferometer-based sensing with different configurations
is also a popular technique for micrometer-scale sensing.
These approaches include interference between a long-period
FBG and a single-mode fiber with an air cavity [6], multi-
mode interference between a multimode fiber and a planar
mirror [7], and core-cladding mode interference with an opti-
cal waveguide (OWG) [8].
For comparison, Table 1 lists these displacement sensors
and their corresponding sensitivities and detection ranges.
In this paper, we propose a micrometer-scale displacement
sensor based on a gradient grating period guided-mode reso-
nance (GGP-GMR) filter. The sensor was fabricated on a plas-
tic substrate, which provided bendability for nonplanar surface
measurement. To utilize this characteristic, we demonstrated
its use as an angular displacement sensor as well as for linear
displacement.
II. M ETHODS
A. Design
The proposed GGP-GMR sensor is based on a
GMR filter, which has been studied theoretically and
9926
TABLE I
C OMPARISON OF O PTICAL D ISPLACEMENT S ENSORS
Fig. 1. (a) Schematic of a GGP-GMR filter attached to a moving object.
(b) Illustration of peak wavelength shift during a change in the position of an
object with an attached GGP-GMR filter. Red and blue curves indicate the
reflection spectra before and after movement.
experimentally [11]–[13]. If suitable device dimensions and
materials are selected and if light is applied at a normal
incident with a broadband light source, then a specific
wavelength of light (the resonant wavelength) will resonate
with the device and be reflected back, whereas other
wavelengths will be transmitted through. Experimentally,
a transmission dip or reflection peak can be observed.
The resonant wavelength can be calculated based on the
second-order Bragg condition [14].
λ R = ne f f  (1)
where λ R is the resonant wavelength, n e f f is the effective
refractive index (RI), and  is the grating period. The effective
RI can be considered to be a weighted average of the RIs of
the GMR filter related to the low RI, high RI, and cover layer,
which was air in this study.
Unlike conventional GMR filters with a constant grating
period, the GMR filter used in this study featured a GGP
(Fig. 1) varying from 250 to 550 nm with 2-nm increments,
and each period consisted of 100 cycles, resulting in a total
length of 6.04 mm. The GMR sensor consisted of three layers
fabricated on a flexible plastic support, a low-RI replicated
grating structure, and a high-RI dielectric layer. To fabricate
the GGP-GMR sensor, three main fabrication processes were
used, namely electron beam (e-beam) lithography, replica
molding, and thin film deposition. In brief, e-beam lithography
IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 18, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2018
Fig. 2. Schematic of linear measurement setup.
was used to generate gratings with gradient periods on an
e-beam resist, and reactive ion etching was used to transfer
the pattern to a Si wafer with grating depth of 85 nm;
subsequently, the e-beam resist was removed to realize a Si
master. Then, Norland optical adhesive 68 (NOA68, Norland
Products Inc.) was sandwiched between the Si master and
a flexible sheet of polyethylene terephthalate (PET). After
the NOA68 was cured through exposure to ultraviolet light,
the PET replica with the gradient grating pattern was sep-
arated from the Si master. To prevent stiction between the
NOA68 and Si master, the Si master was silanized through
immersion in a solution of Repel silane (GE Healthcare Life
Science). Finally, a layer of TiO2 (thickness of 90 nm) was
sputtered on the top of the NOA68. Detailed discussion on
the structure of the fabricated GGP-GMR filter can be found
in [15].
The displacement sensing mechanism is illustrated in Fig. 1.
As explained, when a broadband light source is incident
on a particular location (or particular grating period) of the
GGP-GMR filter, a specific wavelength will resonate at this
period and be reflected back. As shown in (1), the reso-
nant wavelength is proportional to the grating period. When
the position of an object with an attached GGP-GMR filter
changes, the incident light will illuminate the GGP-GMR
filter at a new position with a different grating period; thus,
the resonant wavelength will change accordingly as illustrated
in Fig. 1b. The change in resonant wavelength is correlated
with the shift in lateral distance.
B. Linear Displacement
To verify that the designed GGP-GMR filter can be used
for displacement measurement, the device was mounted on a
manual translational stage with 10-μm resolution. A broad-
band light source (LS-1, Ocean Optics) was connected to one
end of a 2 × 1 fiber (SPLIT400-UV-VIS, Ocean Optics) with
a core diameter of 400 μm, which was used to as a source
of normal incident light for illuminating the GGP-GMR filter.
The fiber exit was approximately 2 mm from the GGP-GMR
filter, resulting in a beam spot size of approximately 1 mm on
the GGP-GMR filter. For spectral measurement, the reflection
of the resonant wavelength was collected by the same fiber and
transmitted to its other end, which was connected to a spec-
trometer (FLAME, Ocean Optics). In this work, the reflection
from the non-grating region was used as reference, which is
defined as 100% reflectivity.
WANG AND HUANG: FLEXIBLE LINEAR AND ANGULAR DISPLACEMENT SENSOR BASED ON A GRADIENT GMR FILTER
Fig. 3. (a) Reflection spectra at different locations of a GGP-GMR filter. (b) Relationship between the displacement and peak wavelength. The peak wavelength
as a function of location at regions of (c) 1 mm, (d) 3 mm, and (e) 5 mm.
The translational stage was gradually moved laterally
in 0.5-mm increments from the smallest period (250 nm),
designated by 0 mm, to the largest period (550 nm), designated
by 6 mm, with a total of 13 locations. The reflection spectra
at these locations are shown in Fig. 3a. The relationship
between the resonant wavelength and the displacement is
shown in Fig. 3b.
To investigate the limit of detection (LOD) and sensitivity
at different parts of the GGP-GMR filter. We measured the
reflection spectra at increments of 50 μm in the regions
of 1, 3, and 5 mm, as highlighted by the red boxes in Fig. 3b.
For each region, an experiment was initiated at the smallest
period, and the displacement was increased in increments
of 50 μm up to 250 μm. The experiment was repeated twice.
The peak wavelength as a function of a location is shown
in Fig. 3c, 3d, and 3e at the locations of 1, 3, and 5 mm,
respectively.
C. Angular Displacement
Because the plastic substrate rendered the GGP-GMR
filter bendable, it could conform to a curved surface
for angular measurement. To verify this, we bonded the
GGP-GMR filter to a cylinder with a diameter of 8 cm.
The cylinder was attached to a plate mounted on a trans-
ducer (L404-011, Sanyo Denki), which was connected to a
controller (ESP300, Newport) with a resolution of 0.001°
(Fig. 4a).
The measurement setup was similar to that used for linear
displacement measurement. First, a broadband light source
was applied at the smallest grating period to define an angle
of 0°. For measuring the reflection spectra and resonant
wavelengths, the reflected light was collected by the same
fiber and transmitted to the other end of the 2 × 1 fiber, which
9927
was connected to a spectrometer. Measurements were taken
at 0.5° increments from 0° to 7°. The experiment was repeated
twice.
The reflection spectra for one of the experimental runs are
shown in Fig. 4b, and the peak wavelength as a function of
angular displacement is shown in Fig. 4c.
To further explore the LOD and investigate the sensitivities
at different locations of the GGP-GMR filter, we measured the
reflection spectra at 0.005 °increments at three locations on the
GGP-GMR filter, as highlighted in the red boxes in Fig. 4c.
To more accurately define the peak wavelength, the Gaussian
model of the software (OriginPro 2016 ) was used to fit the
raw data at the peak regions. Fig. 5a displays an example of
the raw data and the fitted curve at 0.5 °with peak wavelength
of 472.63 nm, and Fig. 5b shows the fitted curves from 0.5 ° to
0.52 ° at 0.005 °increments. Fig. 5c–5d shows the relationship
between the peak wavelength and angular displacement with
lines of best fit at 0.5°, 3.5°, and 6.5°.
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
A. Linear Displacement Sensor
Fig. 3 shows that the position of the GGP-GMR filter and
the corresponding resonant wavelength did not exhibit a linear
relationship. At longer wavelength (or higher grating periods),
the curve gradually levels off, indicating reduced sensitivity.
In this study, we used the same number of repeated cycles
(100 cycles) for each period, resulting in different total lengths
for each period. For example, for the period of 250 nm,
100 repeated cycles resulted in a total length of 25 μm,
whereas, the period of 550 nm had a total length of 55 μm.
For the same change in lateral distance, the shift in the
illuminated grating period was less at longer grating periods.
9928 IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 18, NO. 24, DECEMBER 15, 2018

Fig. 4. (a) Schematic of angular measurement setup. (b) Reflection spectra at different angles. (c) Relationship between peak wavelength and angular
displacement.

Fig. 5. (a) Raw data and fitted curve at 0.5°. (b) Fitted curves from 0.5° to 0.52° with 0.005° increments. Peak wavelength as a function of angular
displacement at (c) 0.5°, (d) 3.5°, and (e) 6.5°.

This resulted in smaller changes in resonant wavelength and
reduced sensitivity in the regions with higher periods.
For a total lateral shift of 6 mm, the resonant wavelength
shifted 396 nm (from 433 to 842 nm). The average sensitivity
was approximated as 67.3 nm/mm based on the slope of
the line of best fit shown in Fig. 3b. An average theoretical
LOD of 3 μm was achieved, which was calculated as the
ratio of the spectrometer resolution (0.2 nm) to the sensitivity.
As discussed, the sensitivity was not constant across the
GGP-GMR filter; instead, the sensitivity gradually decreased
WANG AND HUANG: FLEXIBLE LINEAR AND ANGULAR DISPLACEMENT SENSOR BASED ON A GRADIENT GMR FILTER
with increasing period. In this study, based on Fig. 3c–3e,
the sensitivities at small, medium, and large periods were
determined as 80.2, 59.5, and 56.8 nm/mm, respectively.
Overall, the sensitivities were comparable to those of the
optical sensors listed in Table 1.
B. Angular Displacement Sensor
The reflection spectra exhibited characteristics similar to
those of linear displacement measurement, namely decreasing
reflectivity and increasing resonant wavelength with larger
periods. However, this did not affect subsequent measure-
ments, and the peak wavelengths could be well identified.
The peak wavelength and angular displacement exhibited a
slightly nonlinear relationship, as explained in section A in
Results and Discussion. For an angular shift of 7°, the peak
wavelength shifted 365.1 nm (from 415.8 to 780.9 nm). The
average sensitivity was approximately 51.7 nm/°, which was
determined to be similar to that of linear displacement based
on the slope of the line of best fit.
To scrutinize the sensitivity more carefully at differ-
ent angles (different periods), we considered three regions,
as highlighted by the red boxes shown in Fig. 4c. When the
angular displacement was small, the response was approxi-
mately linear (Fig. 5c–5e). Thus, we could approximate the
sensitivities and LODs at these regions. The sensitivities
of 57.0, 41.8, and 27.5 nm/° at 0.5°, 3.5°, and 6.5°, respec-
tively, decreased with increasing angular displacement (higher
period). The experimental LODs, which were calculated as
the average standard deviation from the experiments divided
by the corresponding sensitivity, were 6.1×10−3°, 2.3×10−3 °,
and 12.1 × 10−3 ° for Fig. 5c, 5d, and 5e, respectively.
C. Improving Sensitivity and Resolution
We believe that the sensitivity and resolution can be further
improved through device optimization. Couple strategies are
suggested for future work. Tibuleac et al. [16] showed that a
GMR filter with only 12 repeated cycles can achieve transmis-
sion spectrum from approximately 81% outside resonance to
approximately 2% resonance in the microwave range. In the
current study, each period consisted of the same number
of repeated cycles (100 cycles); to improve the sensitivity,
the number of repeated cycles could be reduced as long as the
resonance is sufficiently strong for the reflection peak to be
detected, which could also improve the resolution. A 2-nm
increment on the grating period was used in the current
study; however, other increments could be investigated to
further improve the sensitivity and resolution. Based on (1),
the GGP-GMR materials could be chosen for a higher effective
RI, such that for a given lateral displacement, a greater shift in
resonant wavelength can be achieved to improve the sensitivity
and resolution.
D. Nonlinearity and Reduced Reflection Efficiency
For both linear and angular displacement, the GGP-GMR
sensor exhibited some nonlinearity (Fig. 3b and 4c). If a
linear response is desired, gradient repeated cycles could
be used to achieve the same total length for each period.
9929
Moreover, Fig. 3a and 4b indicate that reflection efficiency
decreases with increases in the grating period; however,
the peaks were well defined, and the reduced reflection effi-
ciency at region with higher periods did not affect the subse-
quent measurement of resonant wavelengths. Nevertheless, if
this is of concern, the gradient grating depth could be set such
that the larger period has a deeper grating depth to increase
the coupling efficiency (reflection efficiency).
E. Correction of Thermal Drift
We are currently working on the correction of the peak
wavelength drift caused by temperature variation. Two possi-
ble solutions are evaluated to compensate the thermal drift.
First, the wavelength shift can be corrected for ambient
temperature by establishing a correlation between temper-
ature and the wavelength shift due to temperature vari-
ation. In this case, instead of a single calibration curve
as shown in Fig. 3b and Fig. 4c, multiple calibration
curves for different temperatures need be obtained. Secondly,
since GMR is polarization dependent, the resonance for
both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM)
polarization can be excited simultaneously. As suggested
by Magnusson et al. [17], one could possibly use the shift
of both TM and TE resonant wavelengths to solve two
unknowns – temperature and displacement in this work.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we propose linear and angular displacement
sensors based on a GGP-GMR filter. The average sensitivity
of 66 nm/mm for a detection range of 6 mm was achieved
for linear displacement measurement, which is comparable to
other micrometer-scale displacement sensors based on other
optical devices listed in Table 1. Additionally, due to the
bendable nature of the plastic-based GGP-GMR filter, the sen-
sor was able to conform to a curved surface and measure
angular displacement with an average sensitivity of 51.7 nm/°
for a detection range of 7° on a cylinder with a diameter
of 80 mm. An experimental LOD of 0.002 °was achieved. The
GGP-GMR sensor represents a new paradigm for linear and
angular displacement measurement. We believe that through
optimization of the structure of the GGP-GMR sensor, further
improvement can be achieved in terms of sensitivity, resolu-
tion, linearity, and detection range.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors thank the Nano Facility Center at National
Chiao Tung University and National Nano Device Laborato-
ries, Taiwan, for their support in fabricating and characterizing
the GGP-GMR sensor. This manuscript was edited by Wallace
Academic Editing.
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Yen-Chieh Wang, photograph and biography not available at the time of
publication.
Cheng-Sheng Huang, photograph and biography not available at the time of
publication.