SBIR Phase I: Optical Pressure Sensors

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop novel optical pressure sensor materials that can be used in low pressure regimes, less than 100 psi, with 1 psi or lower resolution. While conventional "pressure sensitive" materials such as pressure sensitive paints actually respond to oxygen partial pressure, few true optical pressure sensors exist that can claim insensitivity to competing effects such as chemicals, bending, temperature, and electric field. Conventional sensors such as fiber Bragg gratings and fiber Fabry-Perot interferometers will continue to be prohibitively expensive for volume applications for a very long time and cannot match the price performance mark of material-based techniques.This pressure specification covers a wide range of applications where optical sensors (and Fiber-optic sensors in particular) are desirable, including diverse markets such as biomedical and surgical (e.g. intravenous and intra-cranial monitoring), energy (fuel cells and gas turbines), materials processing (plastics and polymers), and petrochemical applications (down-hole temperature and pressure monitoring).