The monitoring of sub nano-liter pendant liquid droplets, during their evaporation from the cleaved facet of a standard optical fiber, is proposed and demonstrated. The combined reflections of incident light from the two boundaries, between fiber and liquid and between liquid and air, give rise to interference fringes as the fluid evaporates. The analysis of the fringe pattern allows for the reconstruction of the instantaneous size and evaporation rate of the droplets. These, in turn, provide information regarding the properties of the liquid itself, and the surface to which it is applied. The sensor readout is validated against direct video observation of evaporating droplets. Several examples illustrate the potential of the proposed sensor. Evaporation dynamics measurements identify the ethanol contents in binary ethanol-water mixtures with 2% certainty. The evaporation dynamics are modified by the application of a hydrophobic self-assembled monolayer coating to the tip of the fiber. Ten different organic solvents are accurately classified by clustering analysis of their evaporation data, collected using bare and coated fibers. Potential applications of the sensors could include quality control of water, beverages and oils, recognition of flexible fuel blends and fuel dilutions, mobile point-of-care diagnostics, and laboratory analysis of surface treatments.
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