We investige what is to our knowledge the first demonstration of a tunable fiber Bragg grating device in polymer optical fiber that utilizes a thin-film resistive heater deposited on the surface of the fiber. The polymer fiber was coated via photochemical deposition of a Pd/Cu metallic layer with a procedure induced by vacuum–ultraviolet radiation at room temperature. The resulting device, when wavelength tuned via joule heating, underwent a wavelength shift of 2 nm for a moderate input power of 160 mW, a wavelength to input power coefficient of −13.4 pm/mW, and a time constant of 1.7 /s.

This project is a cooperation amongst Nanophotonics Research Laboratory, Higher Technical Institute, Cyprus; Photonics Research Group, Aston University, UK; Frederick Institute of Technology, Cyprus; University of New South Wales, Australia; and University College London, UK.