A Novel High Temperature Sensor Architecture for Harsh Environments

High temperature sensors capable of operating in harsh environments and providing real-time information on hot spots and temperature profile play a critical role in preventing disasters and improving safety within nuclear reactors. A method widely employed in existing nuclear reactors is the melt wires technique, which suffers from being an after-effect sensor and lower resolution. Our work is focused on the design and fabrication of low power consuming, small size, reversible sensors by combining phase change properties of chalcogenide glasses and compactness of radiation hard optical waveguides to create a highly accurate and real-time temperature sensing system.