Atomic Layer Deposited Thin Films for Optical Fiber Sensors

Dear Colleagues,

Optical fiber sensors (OFSs) have many important advantages, including a fast response, light weight, small size, relatively low cost, and possibility of remote sensing. Another significant advantage they offer is the abundance of possible measurands they are able to monitor. By using OFSs, various physical, chemical, and biological properties can be analyzed, which is useful in many diverse human activity domains. They allow for control over environmental conditions, technological process parameters, stability of construction materials, etc.

Novel optical sensors most often require special thin films made of various materials, or surface structures with different properties, which initiate or modify their sensorial responses. The sensing properties of these devices strongly depend on properties of such thin film materials, such as their electrical or optical properties, as well as size or thickness, which should be tightly controlled.

In the atomic layer deposition (ALD) technique, gaseous chemical precursors are delivered to the reaction zone only separately in time. As a result, the complementary and sequentially repeated chemical reactions of the thin film growth take place in a self-limiting manner on the coated surface. Thanks to this paradigm, a truly atomic control of the film thickness is possible, and films are uniquely conformal, tight, and uniform, even when they are deposited on complicated high-aspect-ratio surfaces. Moreover, the ALD technique enables the deposition of a wide range of materials, which may show various properties as requested by optical sensors—oxide isolators, semiconductors and conductors, nitride isolators and semiconductors, metallic nitrides, II–VI semiconductors and luminescent materials, III–V semiconductors, metals, and many others.

Therefore, ALD has attracted increasing attention from scientists and technologists also in the field of OFSs in recent years.

Dr. Kamil Kosiel
Guest Editor

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• atomic layer deposition (ALD)
• thin films
• coatings
• thin-film materials
• thin-film deposition
• optical-fiber sensors
• fiber optic sensors
• thin-film sensors