Diamond-coated fiber Bragg grating through the hot filament chemical vapor process for chemical durability improvement.

In recent years, the coating of fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) with a specific material has opened up the possibility to broaden the limits of applicability of this technology. Diamond has a set of properties that makes it an attractive candidate to protect the optical fiber against chemically harsh environments, whose sensing is also a great challenge. One of the most used techniques to obtain these coatings is through the hot filament chemical vapor deposition (HFCVD); in this process, the temperature reaches, typically, around 850°C-900°C. In this work, the regeneration of a seed FBG during its coating with a nanocrystalline diamond thin film through the HFCVD process is presented. Simultaneously, the thermal monitoring of the process was also performed using the same grating. The resistance test in a corrosive medium reveals an improvement on the durability of the sensing properties of the diamond-coated FBG compared with an uncoated FBG, foreseeing a vast range of applications.