Laser-Induced Deposition of Carbon Nanotubes in Fiber Optic Tips of MMI Devices.

Natanael Cuando-Espitia,Juan Bernal-Martínez,Miguel Torres-Cisneros,Daniel May-Arrioja

doi:10.3390/s19204512

Abstract

The integration of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) into optical fibers allows the application of their unique properties in robust and versatile devices. Here, we present a laser-induced technique to obtain the deposition of CNTs onto the fiber optics tips of multimode interference (MMI) devices. An MMI device is constructed by splicing a section of no-core fiber (NCF) to a single-mode fiber (SMF). The tip of the MMI device is immersed into a liquid solution of CNTs and laser light is launched into the MMI device. CNTs solutions using water and methanol as solvents were tested. In addition, the use of a polymer dispersant polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) in the CNTs solutions was also studied. We found that the laser-induced deposition of CNTs performed in water-based solutions generates non-uniform deposits. On the other hand, the laser-induced deposition performed with methanol solutions generates uniform deposits over the fiber tip when no PVP is used and deposition at the center of the fiber when PVP is present in the CNTs solution. The results show the crucial role of the solvent on the spatial features of the laser-induced deposition process. Finally, we register and study the reflection spectra of the as-fabricated CNTs deposited MMI devices.

Highlights

Engineered devices based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) represent one of the most promising and active areas of nanotechnology development
Previous reports on the light-induced deposition of carbon nanostructures onto fiber tips have centered their attention on studying alcohol-based solutions of CNTs [24,25,26,27]
These results indicate that the effect of Discussion the solvent on the CNTs is only one factor of the solvent in the complex process of laser-induced deposition

Summary

Introduction

Engineered devices based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) represent one of the most promising and active areas of nanotechnology development. CNTs have attracted the attention of the scientific community due to the extraordinary properties exhibited by these materials. Their electrical, chemical and optical properties have been exploited to develop electrochemical devices [1,2,3,4,5], photonic and laser applications [6,7,8,9,10] and optical biosensors [11,12,13] to name a few. The deposition of CNTs on the surface of optical fiber tips allows for the integration of the unique properties of CNTs into robust and versatile photonic devices. Light-induced deposition is an inexpensive and reliable technique which has been

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