Ultra-sensitive thin-film lithium niobate electric field sensor based on a folded Mach–Zehnder interferometer
Electric field (E-field) sensing plays great roles in both scientific research and engineering applications. E-field sensors with high sensitivity to detect faint signals are still lacking. Thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) E-field sensors have been reported to have lots of advantages. In this study, we demonstrated a high-sensitivity TFLN E-field sensor based on a folded Mach-Zehnder interferometer with a segmented electrode. Such a design significantly extends the effective modulation length within a small footprint (2.8 × 11 mm<sup>2</sup>), overcoming the sensitivity limitations of conventional MZI sensors. The sensor operates from 10 MHz to 550 MHz and achieves a record sensitivity of 3.25 μV/m/Hz<sup>1/2</sup> at 75 MHz among MZI-based sensors.
Authors
- Bing Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5450-1554)
- Yong Liu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6446-3404)
- Z. D. Wang
- Xiaoliang Cheng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3110-8052)
- Bao Sun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0102-9556)
- Zhiyao Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7227-5084)
- Bo Peng (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2696-900X)
Institutions
- University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (CN)
- Beijing Zhenxing Metrology & Measurement Institute (CN)
- National Engineering Research Center of Electromagnetic Radiation Control Materials (CN)
- Beijing Institute of Radio Metrology and Measurement
Publication Details
- Journal
- Optics Letters
- Published
- 2025-08-25
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1364/ol.571431
- Citations
- 1
- Primary Topic
- Photorefractive and Nonlinear Optics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 1.25