Pushing the limits in soft glass properties and microstructured fibre fabrication

Abstract

Soft glass optical fibres have demonstrated growing interest in recent years for nonlinear processing, mid-­‐infrared lasing and sensing applications due to their extended properties relative to silica-­‐based glasses. Soft glasses have also been exploited to embed nanocrystals in glass. Furthermore, soft glasses enable use of the extrusion technique to create an almost unlimited variation of fibre structures. This talk will review the recent progress achieved in the development of glasses with advanced properties such as significantly reduced transmission loss of tellurite and germanate glass in the mid-­‐infrared, extended mid-­‐infrared transmission range for fluoride glass, single photon emission in diamond-­‐tellurite glass and optically stimulated luminescence in fluoride-­ phosphate glass. In addition, the talk will report on the fabrication of optical fibres from these advanced glasses as well as of fibres with extreme structures such as nanoscale core size and exposed core fibres. The talk will also include application opportunities for the speciality fibres made.