Sitex 45 SENSGLASS Project

Sensglass

Innovative optical microsensors based on rare-earth-doped phosphate

2011-2013

«Projects«

Ctr. 7-031/2011

Name's program from PN II: Partners in priority dominium ERA NET

Coordinator

National Institute of Research and Development for Optoelectronics INOE 2000 Romania

Project Partners

Sitex 45 Romania

Faculty of Science and Technology New University of Lisbon Portugal

Arteos GmbH Germany

SUMMARY

The project intends to develop an innovative application based on an optical sensor able to measure the position and the displacement of a certain object. The optical sensor is made of a rare-earth-doped phosphate glass, which works as a non-contact laser speckle sensor. The composition of the phosphate glass belongs to Li2O-BaO-Al2O3-P2O5 oxide system doped with rare-earth oxides (Eu2O3, Sm2O3). The glass is prepared by a wet non-conventional route, which improves the physical-chemical properties of the final glass. The project develops a novel method for measurement of singular displacements in one and two directions for arbitrarily shaped objects.
The novelty features brought by the project could be summarized as follows: (i) the elimination of the minimal interference between the object and sensor, (ii) the short response time due to the characteristics of modern photoelectronic light detectors, (iii) the flexibility of the method implementation, suitable for a broad range of measuring tasks, both in laboratory and industry, (iv) the innovative concept as a multifunctional sensor. These applications require only direct optical (visual) line by the protection of the active optical path from obstacles, extraneous light interference and vibrations of the sensor body.
The sensor is insensitive to the object shape, distance to the object and any longitudinal or transversal movement of the target when the image sensor is placed in the Fourier plane. The sensor could perform a resolution of 0.3 mdeg for small angular displacement.
The sensor utilization does not require special processing of the object surface, because the irregularities are comparable to the wavelength of the incident light. The sensor is a very robust device working as a non-contact optical system to be used for industrial and instrumentation applications. The additionally micro-optical parts like micromirrors and/or microlens allow to be used as an integrated micro-opto-electromechanical microsystem (MOEMS) for industrial and scientific applications. The wider operating temperature range considered between -40 to 85ºC made it applicable for indoor and outdoor conditions including harsh environment encountered in a wide range of industrial applications and also for steering angle detection in automotive applications (e.g. for electronic stability control). Compared to other technologies our optical sensor has many advantages like highly accurate angle information, digital output and insensitivity to external noises sources.