Optoelectronic Sensors

Dear Colleagues,

Rapidly growing advancement in optoelectronic and photonics technology has not only diversified application areas of fiber-optic and photonic sensors but has also enabled the lowering of sensor manufacturing and interrogation costs, reducing the size, weight, and power consumption (SWaP), and also achieving unprecedented sensitivity, higher bandwidth, and a wider dynamic range in the measurand physical parameters of interest.

Optoelectronic sensor technology has benefitted from the development of long-haul optical fiber communication as light signals with encoded sensing information can be transported longer distances, enabling remote and distributed sensing capabilities. The availability of a multitude of sensing design architectures, a host of sensing materials over a broad electromagnetic spectrum, and a range of optoelectronics for signal processing to encode and decode the embedded information within the light in terms of its intensity, phase, polarization, frequency and wavelength shift have facilitated development in multiparameter sensing technology such as in acoustics/vibration, strain, temperature, pressure, gas, humidity, electric and magnetic fields, to name a few.

Manifold sensing has broadened the applications from structural health monitoring of infrastructure assets spanning civil, transportation, electrical, and gas to integrity monitoring of conventional (thermal and nuclear energy) and renewable generation systems, thanks to the immunity to electromagnetic interference and harsh environment (corrosive/high temperature/radiation) compatibility of the dielectric materials platform.  In the case of extreme temperature operational environments, ruggedized material engineering through single crystal fiber growth and modification of refractory materials such as sapphire and YAG has also been impactful.  The biocompatibility of optical materials and enhanced sensitivity and resolution is also making these sensors appealing to biomedical devices. The machine-learning-empowered optimized sensor design, advancement in CMOS-process-based thin sensing-film engineering, enhanced light–matter interaction via surface plasmons/polaritons and even nanostructured metamaterial schemes is pushing the limits of the performance metrics of optoelectronics sensors even further. Progress has also been made in integrating quantum sensing materials in the fiber-optic and photonics platforms.

This Special Issue is dedicated to the advances in optoelectronic sensors, whether pertaining to the advances in new sensing material engineering, implementation of novel physical concepts and optoelectronics for interrogation or optimization and novel design of the sensor architecture itself. Therefore, we welcome original research, review articles and short communication letters within the realm of point, quasi-distributed and fully distributed optoelectronics sensors for the sensing of various physical parameters in both fiber-optic and on-chip photonic waveguide platforms.

Dr. Paul R. Ohodnicki
Dr. Dolendra Karki
Dr. Khurram Naeem
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.