Neutron Radiation Response of Optical Fiber Gratings for Sensing in Harsh Environment Gaia Maria Berruti, Lorenzo Scherino, Patrizio Vaiano, Simona Zuppolini, Aldobenedetto Zotti, Giuseppe Quero, Mauro Zarrelli, Anna Borriello, Paolo Petagna, Andrea Cusano, Marco Consales Journal of Lightwave Technology, 2026 Monitoring in radiation-intensive environments poses major challenges for conventional sensing technologies, which often suffer from performance degradation, high maintenance demands and limited long-term stability. In this context, optical fiber (OF) sensors represent a promising alternative. However, their deployment in such applications requires a systematic qualification of their radiation response under realistic operating conditions. In this work we report on results collected during the first neutron irradiation campaign of both bare and titanium dioxide-coated UV-written Long Period Gratings (LPGs), as well as Fiber Bragg Gratings (FBGs) inscribed by UV and femtosecond laser techniques, in photosensitive B-Ge doped fibers. The LPGs were exposed to a cumulative neutron fluence of ∼3.4 × 10¹⁵ n/cm², while the FBGs to a higher fluence of ∼8.6 × 10¹⁵ n/cm². The spectral response of the investigated samples under neutron irradiation was analyzed with respect to wavelength shifts and visibility variations. Collected results clearly demonstrate the robustness of OF devices in neutron environments and highlight the potential of nanoscale coatings to design radiation-hardened optical sensors. Moreover, such advances enable strategies for the development of enhanced OF sensing platforms for environmental monitoring in nuclear and high-energy physics applications.
Towards microfluidics assisted optical fiber metatip biosensors Patrizio Vaiano, Sarassunta Ucci, Gaia Maria Berruti, Angela Maria Cusano, Sara Spaziani, Francesco Di Menna, Maria Principe, Gustavo Marini, Nicola Fontana, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Sensors and Actuators B Chemical, 2026 The importance of biosensors based on optical fiber (OF) technology is increasing due to their high sensitivity and compatibility with minimally invasive real-time diagnostics and enormous potentials for in vivo biopsies. This study investigates the technical aspects behind integrating Lab-on-Tip optrodes within microfluidic channels, which is propaedeutic for guidelines setting towards their correct connection with minimally invasive clinical tools such as needles, catheters and nanoendoscopes. Here, as proof of concept, we investigated the integration of a plasmonic Metasurface-assisted Lab-on-Tip optrode, realized onto a single mode OF tip (OFMT), into a T-shaped microfluidic chip for the detection of a clinically relevant target molecule as the breast cancer biomarker receptor tyrosine protein kinase (ErbB2). The biosensor response to different ErbB2 concentrations (1–1000 ng/mL) was analyzed under controlled flow conditions. Experiments demonstrated a strong dependence of the detection performance on the probe position within the microfluidic channel, with increased performance frustration as the distance of the tip from the center is reduced. These findings, confirmed by numerical modeling, revealed an inverse relationship between the flow velocity and the biosensor performance. This relationship was further corroborated by additional experiments demonstrating that higher flow rates reduce the target molecule capability to correctly recognize the bioreceptor immobilized on the sensor surface due to the shorter analyte-probe interaction time. In summary, the present study highlights the importance of a multi-aspect microfluidics design considering local flow conditions for optimal probe placement, providing valuable guidelines for improving detection capabilities of microfluidic assisted Lab-on-Tip biosensing platforms for biomedical applications. • A Lab-on-Tip plasmonic optrode was integrated in a microfluidic chip to detect ErbB2. • The probe position in the channel and the flow rate affect the detection performance. • The biosensor response to different ErbB2 concentrations (1–1000 ng/mL) was analyzed.
Optical Fiber Meta-Tips Based on Partial-Phase Control Maria Principe, Patrizio Vaiano, Gaia Maria Berruti, Alberto Micco, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Advanced Optical Materials, 2025 Lab‐on‐fiber technology is deemed pivotal in many fields due to the advantages offered by the mature optical fiber technology. Therefore, the development of optical components integrated into optical fibers is crucial. The ability to integrate metasurfaces into optical fibers has led to a greater number of degrees of freedom that might be used to realize all‐in‐fiber optical components. Here we explore the potential of plasmonic MSs based on a partial coverage of the phase range, introduced by Hail, but so far essentially unexplored. Exploiting this paradigm, we realize a beam splitter and a focusing lens at the tip of a single mode fiber operating in the near infrared. We show that partial‐phase MSs, unlike their standard plasmonic counterparts, enable the generation of two beams, the ordinary and the anomalous one, that have the same polarization state and delivered power, allowing efficiencies of up to ∼30% to be achieved. Furthermore, we demonstrate that it is possible to focus light a few micrometers from the tip without the need of a beam expander. The realized meta‐lens has a numerical aperture of 0.71 and a focusing efficiency of 20%, the highest efficiency achieved so far with a flat lens on a fiber tip.
Metasurface-based lab-on-fiber biosensor for label-free detection of vitamin D Angela Maria Cusano, Giuseppe Quero, Patrizio Vaiano, Paola Cicatiello, Maria Principe, Alberto Micco, Menotti Ruvo, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering, 2025 The growing need for effective vitamin D assessment has emphasized the importance of developing rapid, accurate, and user-friendly detection tools, particularly for integration into Point-of-Care (PoC) diagnostic devices. Detecting 25- hydroxyvitamin D3 (25(OH)D3), the main circulating form of vitamin D, poses significant challenges due to the intricate sample preparation and its small molecular size, which necessitates highly sensitive detection technologies. Recent studies have explored alternative methods to traditional approaches; however, these methods still have several limitations, such as space requirements, limited sensitivity, expensive protocols, and reliance on external conditions. This work introduces an innovative, label-free Lab-on-Fiber (LoF) biosensing platform tailored for the precise detection of 25(OH)D3. The sensor device integrates plasmonic metasurfaces onto the tip of a single-mode optical fiber, offering high sensitivity combined with a compact design. A carefully crafted pipeline was implemented to optimize biofunctionalization protocols ensuring high affinity and specificity. The metasurface-enhanced LoF biosensor demonstrated excellent performance, enabling detection of 25(OH)D3 across clinically significant ranges (4–160 ng/mL) in both buffer solutions and complex biological matrices. Notably, the platform achieved a limit of detection (LOD) of 1.40 ng/mL in saline buffer and 0.85 ng/mL in complex matrices. These findings confirm the platform’s capability to accurately detect small molecules in a label-free configuration, with sensitivity and specificity comparable to conventional clinical methods. Its compact structure and high sensitivity make it a promising tool for the development of cost-effective, quick, and easy-to-use PoC diagnostic devices.
Effect of TiO2 coating on neutron response of UV-written B-Ge co-doped optical fiber long-period gratings Lorenzo Scherino, Gaia Maria Berruti, Patrizio Vaiano, Giuseppe Quero, Simona Zuppolini, Aldobenedetto Zotti, Mauro Zarrelli, Anna Borriello, Paolo Petagna, Andrea Cusano, Marco Consales Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering, 2025 This contribution presents the response to neutron irradiation of Long Period Gratings (LPGs) inscribed in a B/Ge codoped optical fiber by means of an excimer laser. The effect of a nanoscale titanium dioxide (TiO<sub>2</sub>) coating is discussed. The experiment was conducted in the TRIGA MARK II research reactor of the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana, where the optical fiber devices were subjected to a total accumulated fluence of approximately 3.4×10<sup>15</sup> n/cm<sup>2</sup>. The impact of neutron irradiation on the spectral responses of the LPGs under analysis was investigated in terms of both radiationinduced shifts and changes in visibility. The presented results highlight the potential of nanoscale layers to modulate the sensitivity of LPG-based devices to radiation, thus providing a pathway for tailoring their response in specific applications of radiation dosimetry and in neutron rich environments.
All-Optical Self-Heated Sensing Platform for Water Content Monitoring in Soil Gaia Maria Berruti, Marco Leone, Patrizio Vaiano, Giovanni Vito Persiano, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano EPJ Web of Conferences, 2024 In this contribution, we propose the use of an advanced all-optical self-heated sensing platform for highly sensitive monitoring of the volumetric water content (VWC) in the soil. The sensor is realized by properly integrating, inside a standard metallic needle, a fiber optic heating device based on core offset light coupling method and a Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) acting as thermal monitor. The performance of the proposed device was validated through a series of measurements in the range [9 - 36] %VWC in the soil temperature range between 5 and 40 °C. Collected results have demonstrated that the presented platform is able to perform highly stable, fast and robust measurements, with time response lower than 10 seconds. The possibility of tuning the value of the injected power according to the application makes the proposed sensing solution extremely flexible and versatile for its exploitation in large areas and/or long-distance.
All-optical active sensing platform for continuous and sustainable soil water content monitoring Gaia Maria Berruti, Marco Leone, Patrizio Vaiano, Giovanni Vito Persiano, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Optics and Lasers in Engineering, 2024 The determination of the amount of moisture in soil is crucial in several application fields such as agricultural, geotechnical, hydrological, and environmental engineering. In this paper, we propose the use of an advanced all-optical self-heated sensing platform for highly sensitive and repeatable monitoring of the soil volumetric water content (VWC). The proposed platform is realized by integrating, inside a standard metallic needle, a fiber optic heating device integrated with a fiber Bragg grating sensor (FBG) acting as thermal monitor. The all optical active heating device consists of two main components: i) a core offset fusion splice between two single mode optical fibers to spread light from the core to the cladding and ii) a metal-coated region of the fiber where the FBG is inscribed. A full characterization of the proposed device has been performed for different VWC values from 9 to 36 %VWC in the soil temperature range between 5 and 40 °C. Collected results demonstrate that the proposed platform is able to perform highly stable, fast, robust and energy efficient measurements of the soil water content, with a repeatability error of 1.5 %VWC, time response ≤ 10 s and resolution ≤ 0.25 %VWC. The possibility of tuning the value of the injected power according to the application makes the proposed sensor extremely flexible and versatile for its exploitation in large areas and/or long-distance monitoring applications with relevant advantages in terms of energy savings, costs and system complexity.
Optrode-Assisted Multiparametric Near-Infrared Spectroscopy for the Analysis of Liquids Maria Giulia Delli Santi, Salvatore Castrignano, Marialuisa Capezzuto, Marco Consales, Patrizio Vaiano, Andrea Cusano, Gianluca Gagliardi, Pietro Malara Sensors, 2024 We demonstrate a sensing scheme for liquid analytes that integrates multiple optical fiber sensors in a near-infrared spectrometer. With a simple optofluidic method, a broadband radiation is encoded in a time-domain interferogram and distributed to different sensing units that interrogate the sample simultaneously; the spectral readout of each unit is extracted from its output signal by a Fourier transform routine. The proposed method allows performing a multiparametric analysis of liquid samples in a compact setup where the radiation source, measurement units, and spectral readout are all integrated in a robust telecom optical fiber. An experimental validation is provided by combining a plasmonic nanostructured fiber probe and a transmission cuvette in the setup and demonstrating the simultaneous measurement of the absorption spectrum and the refractive index of water–methanol solutions.
Characterization of Lab-on-Fiber-based dosimeters in ultra-high dose radiation fields Patrizio Vaiano, Giuseppe Quero, Francesco Fienga, Valentina Di Meo, Pierluigi Casolaro, Luigi Campajola, Giovanni Breglio, Alessio Crescitelli, Emanuela Esposito, Antonello Cutolo, Federico Ravotti, Salvatore Buontempo, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Optics and Laser Technology, 2023
Innovative Photonic Sensors for Safety and Security, Part III: Environment, Agriculture and Soil Monitoring Giovanni Breglio, Romeo Bernini, Gaia Maria Berruti, Francesco Antonio Bruno, Salvatore Buontempo, Stefania Campopiano, Ester Catalano, Marco Consales, Agnese Coscetta, Antonello Cutolo, Maria Alessandra Cutolo, Pasquale Di Palma, Flavio Esposito, Francesco Fienga, Michele Giordano, Antonio Iele, Agostino Iadicicco, Andrea Irace, Mohammed Janneh, Armando Laudati, Marco Leone, Luca Maresca, Vincenzo Romano Marrazzo, Aldo Minardo, Marco Pisco, Giuseppe Quero, Michele Riccio, Anubhav Srivastava, Patrizio Vaiano, Luigi Zeni, Andrea Cusano Sensors, 2023
Innovative Photonic Sensors for Safety and Security, Part I: Fundamentals, Infrastructural and Ground Transportations Aldo Minardo, Romeo Bernini, Gaia Maria Berruti, Giovanni Breglio, Francesco Antonio Bruno, Salvatore Buontempo, Stefania Campopiano, Ester Catalano, Marco Consales, Agnese Coscetta, Andrea Cusano, Maria Alessandra Cutolo, Pasquale Di Palma, Flavio Esposito, Francesco Fienga, Michele Giordano, Antonio Iele, Agostino Iadicicco, Andrea Irace, Mohammed Janneh, Armando Laudati, Marco Leone, Luca Maresca, Vincenzo Romano Marrazzo, Marco Pisco, Giuseppe Quero, Michele Riccio, Anubhav Srivastava, Patrizio Vaiano, Luigi Zeni, Antonello Cutolo Sensors, 2023
Innovative Photonic Sensors for Safety and Security, Part II: Aerospace and Submarine Applications Antonello Cutolo, Romeo Bernini, Gaia Maria Berruti, Giovanni Breglio, Francesco Antonio Bruno, Salvatore Buontempo, Ester Catalano, Marco Consales, Agnese Coscetta, Andrea Cusano, Maria Alessandra Cutolo, Pasquale Di Palma, Flavio Esposito, Francesco Fienga, Michele Giordano, Antonio Iele, Agostino Iadicicco, Andrea Irace, Mohammed Janneh, Armando Laudati, Marco Leone, Luca Maresca, Vincenzo Romano Marrazzo, Aldo Minardo, Marco Pisco, Giuseppe Quero, Michele Riccio, Anubhav Srivastava, Patrizio Vaiano, Luigi Zeni, Stefania Campopiano Sensors, 2023
Lab-on-fiber Optrodes based on All-Dielectric Fluorescence Enhancing Metasurfaces Hiba Alhalaby, Maria Principe, Haitham Zaraket, Patrizio Vaiano, Anna Aliberti, Giuseppe Quero, Alessio Crescitelli, Valentina Di Meo, Emanuela Esposito, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering, 2023
Fiber optic sensors in the ATLAS Inner Detector L. Scherino, E.J. Schioppa, A. Arapova, G.M. Berruti, W.J. Bock, A. Boniello, A. Borriello, S. Campopiano, M. Consales, A. Cusano, F. Esposito, A. Iadicicco, S. Kachiguine, P. Mikulic, K. Nagai, T. Neves, P. Petagna, G. Quero, D. Robinson, A. Srivastava, P. Vaiano, N. Venturi, M. Zarrelli, A. Zotti, S. Zuppolini Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A Accelerators Spectrometers Detectors and Associated Equipment, 2022
FOS-based thermo-hygrometers in the ATLAS Inner Detector L. Scherino, E. J. Schioppa, A. Arapova, G. M. Berruti, W. J. Bock, A. Borriello, S. Campopiano, M. Consales, A. Cusano, F. Esposito, A. Iadicicco, P. Mikulic, T. Neves, P. Petagna, G. Quero, A. Srivastava, P. Vaiano, M. Zarrelli, A. Zotti, S. Zuppolini Optics Infobase Conference Papers, 2022
Radiation-induced effects on UV-written LPGs inscribed in B-Ge doped optical fiber for experiments running at CERN Optics Infobase Conference Papers, 2020
An innovative extrinsic fiber optic sensor for real-time radiation monitoring Optics Infobase Conference Papers, 2020
Real-time dosimetry with radiochromic films Pierluigi Casolaro, Luigi Campajola, Giovanni Breglio, Salvatore Buontempo, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano, Antonello Cutolo, Francesco Di Capua, Francesco Fienga, Patrizio Vaiano Scientific Reports, 2019
Innovative lab on fiber dosimeters for ionizing radiation monitoring at ultra-high doses Giuseppe Quero, Patrizio Vaiano, Francesco Fienga, Martino Giaquinto, Valentina Di Meo, Georgi Gorine, Pierluigi Casolaro, Luigi Campajola, Giovanni Breglio, Alessio Crescitelli, Emanuela Esposito, Armando Ricciardi, Antonello Cutolo, Federico Ravotti, Salvatore Buontempo, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Proceedings of SPIE the International Society for Optical Engineering, 2019
A novel Lab-on-Fiber Radiation Dosimeter for Ultra-high Dose Monitoring Giuseppe Quero, Patrizio Vaiano, Francesco Fienga, Martino Giaquinto, Valentina Di Meo, Georgi Gorine, Pierluigi Casolaro, Luigi Campajola, Giovanni Breglio, Alessio Crescitelli, Emanuela Esposito, Armando Ricciardi, Antonello Cutolo, Federico Ravotti, Salvatore Buontempo, Marco Consales, Andrea Cusano Scientific Reports, 2018
Lab on Fiber Technology for biological sensing applications Patrizio Vaiano, Benito Carotenuto, Marco Pisco, Armando Ricciardi, Giuseppe Quero, Marco Consales, Alessio Crescitelli, Emanuela Esposito, Andrea Cusano Laser and Photonics Reviews, 2016
Long period fiber grating nano-optrode for cancer biomarker detection Giuseppe Quero, Marco Consales, Renato Severino, Patrizio Vaiano, Alessandra Boniello, Annamaria Sandomenico, Menotti Ruvo, Anna Borriello, Laura Diodato, Simona Zuppolini, Michele Giordano, Immacolata Cristina Nettore, Claudia Mazzarella, Annamaria Colao, Paolo Emidio Macchia, Flavio Santorelli, Antonello Cutolo, Andrea Cusano Biosensors and Bioelectronics, 2016
High sensitive long period fiber grating biosensor for cancer biomarker detection Giuseppe Quero, Marco Consales, Renato Severino, Patrizio Vaiano, Alessandra Boniello, Annamaria Sandomenico, Menotti Ruvo, Anna Borriello, Laura Diodato, Simona Zuppolini, Michele Giordano, Immacolata Cristina Nettore, Annamaria Colao, Paolo Emidio Macchia, Flavio Santorelli, Antonello Cutolo, Andrea Cusano Healthinf 2016 9th International Conference on Health Informatics Proceedings Part of 9th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies Biostec 2016, 2016
