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...
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...
MPL Newsletter
Stay up-to-date with MPL’s latest research via our Newsletter.
Current issue: Newsletter No 25 - January 2023
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