Abstract

Advantages of lifetime based sensors (for temperature etc.) compared to intensity sensors have been thoroughly presented in terms of intrinsicaly stable and reference-free measurements¹. There is however a limited number of materials that have strong fluorescence lifetime dependence on desired physical or chemical property of the environment. Even smaller subset have properties such as long lifetime, high quantum efficiency and chemical stability that enable long term adecquate SNR with simple electronics and design. Vast majority of fiber optic sensors is intensity based, so the possibility of encoding absorption in the measured material in a time-dependent signal with all the advantages of a lifetime based sensors is highly desired.

© 1998 IEEE