Fabrication and application of single crystal fiber via laser heated pedestal growth system

Abstract

Single crystal fiber has a wide range of applications spanning from high temperature sensing, radiation sensing in harsh environment, high power laser and power delivery, medical and chemical application, and imaging applications. Nevertheless, the potential of single crystal fiber has not been fully explored in part because of the limited facilities available for custom growth of high quality, low loss, and custom fiber chemistries and geometries. The presentation provides an overview of recent work and current state of the art on growth of single crystal oxide fibers using various techniques. A discussion of recent progress in applications of single crystal fibers was also presented spanning harsh environment sensing, radiation sensing, and fiber lasers. In this paper, we also overview establishment of a Laser Heated Pedestal Growth system at University of Pittsburgh including the online monitoring of the fiber growth process and discuss important process parameters for future process optimization. We demonstrate the growth of single crystal fiber from a polycrystalline source rod which may be a more affordable and flexible method in the future.