Huge freedom in choice of fibre structure and materials

We draw fibres both from ultrahigh purity silica as well as from various other glasses fabricated in-house. In addition to having different glasses to choose from, we routinely fabricate a wide range of different fibre structures for use in many different projects throughout the institute and external collaborations. The technology permits a wide range of different structures to be realised, from simple periodic lattices of air channels to nanoweb structures and more complicated architectures. High quality hollow-core PCF is essential for the projects on gas-laser devices, optical sensors and particle guidance. Solid-core structures include dual-nanoweb fibre, twisted PCF and small-core PCFs for use in passive optoacoustic mode-locking of fibre lasers. The images on the right shows examples of structures made at MPL.

Soft-glasses such as heavy-metal oxides, fluorides and chalcogenides have the potential to extend the transparency window of optical fibres into the deep-ultraviolet and mid-infrared regions. In addition, PCFs fabricated from soft-glasses also possess favourable pro­per­ties such as high linear and nonlinear refractive indices, and in some cases offer freedom from UV-induced optical damage and high rare-earth solubility. We have successfully produced fibres for supercontinuum generation, photochemistry, optomechanics, triplet-photon generation, holographic optical tweezing, and other novel applications.