Fibre Fabrication
The fabrication of high quality custom-designed photonic crystal and microstructured fibres is central to the research at MPL. The goal is to remain at the forefront of developing novel types of PCFs, and to provide a short path from the first idea of a new experiment to the realization of the often unique fibre required for the experiment. We have two drawing towers for silica capillaries and fibres, and one for drawing of soft-glass. All three are located in a state-of-the-art cleanroom in the MPL building complex.
Stack-and-draw
We use the "stack-and-draw" procedure, which relies on manual assembly of glass capillaries and rods into an appropriate preform stack whose structure corresponds approximately to the desired fibre structure. Read more...
UV-guiding hollow-core fibres
Using hollow-core fibres, where the transmitted light has an extremely low (<0.1%) overlap with the glass, prevents glass damage. Read more...
Huge freedom in choice of fibre structure and materials
The stack-and-draw technique allows us a great deal of flexibility in microstructuring optical fibres. Read more...
Beyond stack-and-draw
In collaboration with two Fraunhofer institutes, we plan to use so-called inverse laser drilling to make preforms with structures that would be impossible to make using the traditional stack-and-draw technique, for example hollow-core structures with highly elliptical holes. Read more ...
Single-ring hollow-core fibres
Single-ring hollow-core fibres are ideal for exploring nonlinear effects in gas-filled fibres and many other applications. Read more...
Non-invasive real-time characterization of fibre structure using whispering gallery mode spectroscopy
We demonstrated the first non-invasive technique to measure the internal microstructure of a hollow-core fibre in real-time, while it is being drawn. Read more...
Chlorine treatment to reduce contaminants
We explored the loss-reducing effect of treating the preforms with chlorine gas prior to fibre drawing, as well as the importance of using a dry gas for pressurization during fibre drawing. Read more...
