Abstract
The combination of chalcogenide glasses with polymer photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) is a difficult and challenging task due to their different thermo-mechanical material properties. Here we report the first experimental realization of a hybrid polymer-chalcogenide PCF with integrated As2S3 glass nanofilms at the inner surface of the air-channels of a poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) PCF. The integrated high refractive index glass films introduce distinct antiresonant transmission bands in the 480–900 nm wavelength region. We demonstrate that the ultra-high Kerr nonlinearity of the chalcogenide glass makes the polymer PCF nonlinear and provides a possibility to shift the transmission band edges as much as 17 nm by changing the intensity. The proposed fabrication technique constitutes a new highway towards all-fiber nonlinear tunable devices based on polymer PCFs, which at the moment is not possible with any other fabrication method.
Highlights
Hybrid polymer photonic crystal fiber with integrated chalcogenide glass nanofilms Christos Markos, Irnis Kubat & Ole Bang
We demonstrate that the ultra-high Kerr nonlinearity of the chalcogenide glass makes the polymer photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) nonlinear and provides a possibility to shift the transmission band edges as much as 17 nm by changing the intensity
In order to investigate the role of the concentration to the final thickness of the glass layers inside the holes of the fiber, two different chalcogenide glass solutions were prepared with concentration,50 mg/mL and,400 mg/mL
Summary
Hybrid polymer photonic crystal fiber with integrated chalcogenide glass nanofilms Christos Markos, Irnis Kubat & Ole Bang. Silica PCFs are widely used in wavelength conversion and supercontinuum sources[13] due to their low material loss and tunable zero-dispersion, while on the other hand polymer PCFs have been used mainly for sensing applications, such as strain sensing[14,15,16,17] and fiber-optical biosensing[18,19], due to their low Young’s modulus and biocompatibility properties, respectively Another distinct advantage of PCFs is their unique ability to host novel and functional materials in their cladding holes providing the possibility for completely different guiding mechanisms[20,21]. Chalcogenide glasses are considered ideal optical materials for the development of all-fiber nonlinear devices, since they exhibit an extremely high Kerr nonlinear coefficient, can transmit light in the mid-IR, and have low two photon absorption and a fast response time[30], in contrast to for example polymer materials. This technique requires expensive, custom-made and sophisticated equipment and www.nature.com/scientificreports materials inside the holes of a polymer PCF or even in planar waveguide structures for mid-IR applications[33]
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