Random-hole optical fiber for low-cost distributed pressure
This technology creates optical fiber with a random pattern of microscopic holes running along its length, formed naturally during the manufacturing process when gas-generating materials like silicon nitride produce bubbles that elongate into tiny channels. Rather than precisely arranged holes (which require complex, expensive fabrication), the randomness emerges from the physics of how gas bubbles behave during fiber drawing — a much simpler production method. These holey fibers can guide light effectively and, critically, their optical transmission changes measurably when mechanical pressure or force is applied. That pressure-sensing behavior makes them useful as distributed fiber-optic sensors embedded in structures or systems.
What you could build
A low-cost distributed pressure or strain sensor built into civil infrastructure, industrial pipelines, or composite materials, where the fiber itself is the sensing element; buyers would be structural health monitoring firms, aerospace integrators, and industrial process control equipment makers.
Who in Virginia should care
Defense and aerospace contractors in Northern Virginia and Hampton Roads that work on structural health monitoring for aircraft, ships, or facilities would be plausible licensees or development partners.
Readiness: Lab validated
Concept — described but not yet demonstrated. Lab validated — supported by experimental results in the patent. Prototype likely — the text describes a built, working embodiment.
Readiness is inferred from the patent text, not from a lab visit.
The record
- Inventors
- Gary Pickrell, Daniel Kominsky, Roger Stoleh, Jeong I. Kim, Anbo Wang, Ahmad Safaai-Jazi
- Granted
- July 28, 2009
- Status
- Granted patent
- Patent number
- 7567742
Ready to talk?
Virginia Tech Intellectual Properties handles licensing for this technology.
Prosim summaries are generated from public patent text and are not legal advice.