The following projects and grants supported the research performed in this PhD: Optical Fiber Sensors for Safety and Protection (TEC2013-47264-C2-1-R), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Sensores fotónicos para la seguridad y protección (SENSA) (TEC2016-076021-C2-2-R), AEI/FEDER, UE. BES-2014-069736, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. EEBB-I-17-12409, Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. From the participation on these projects, authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of the whole Photonics Engineering Group, especially Mauro Lomer and Pablo Varona Roldán. Jesús Mirapeix Serrano, Arturo Pardo Franco, Olga Ma Conde Portilla and Antonio Quintela Incera have also supported this work by thoughtful manuscript revisions or printing and binding management. This dissertation was improved by the fruitful collaborations with the group led by Prof. Manuel López Amo, particularly Rosa Ana Pérez Herrera performed measurements and montages that supported the results obtained in this work. Besides, authors would like to acknowledge the invaluable contributions that Bertrand Poumellec and Matthieu Lancry from the Institut de Chimie Moléculaire et des Matériaux d’Orsay have performed to this work.

RESUMEN: En este trabajo se establece el procesado por láseres de femtosegundo como método fiable de producir diversos tipos de sensores de fibra óptica. Para ello se ha estudiado la inscripción en fibra, dando lugar a un interferómetro tipo Mach-Zehnder y a redes de difracción tanto de Bragg como de periodo aleatorio. Igualmente, se ha estudiado la inscripción en la punta de la fibra, generando diversos patrones difractivos en numerosos tipos de fibra óptica y aplicándolos tanto al sensado extrínseco como extrínseco.

ABSTRACT: In this work, femtosecond laser processing is highlighted as an effective way to produce several types of optical fiber sensors. A deep study of in-fiber laser inscription has been performed, obtaining a Mach-Zehnder interferometer and both Bragg and random gratings as a result. Attention was also focused to the fiber end-face, where several fiber diffractive configurations were studied in several types of fiber optics. These patterns were employed for both intrinsic and extrinsic measurements.