Microspheres Formation in a Glass-Metal Hybrid Fiber System: Application in Optical Microwires.

Afroditi Petropoulou,Christos Riziotis,Dimitris Drikakis

doi:10.3390/ma12121969

Abstract

Multicomponent optical fibers with incorporated metals are promising photonic platforms for engineering of tailored plasmonic structures by laser micromachining or thermal processing. It has been observed that during thermal processing microfluidic phenomena lead to the formation of embedded micro- and nanostructures and spheres, thus triggering the technological motivation for their theoretical investigation, especially in the practical case of noble metal/glass composites that have not yet been investigated. Implemented microwires of gold core and glass cladding, recently studied experimentally, are considered as a reference validation platform. The Plateau-Rayleigh instability in such hybrid fibers is theoretically investigated by inducing surface tension perturbations and by comparing them to the Tomotika instability theory. The continuous-core breakup time was calculated via Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations for different temperatures and was found to be considerably higher to Tomotika’s model, while the final sphere diameter is a linear function of the initial core radius. Different sinusoidal perturbation parameters were considered, showing significant impact in the characteristics of formed spherical features. The theoretical results were in close agreement with previous experimental observations expected to assist in the understanding of the processes involved, providing insight into the engineering of fibers, both in the initial drawing process and post processing.

Highlights

The need for tailoring the properties of optical fibers has resulted in the design and fabrication of hybrid multicomponent material fiber structures
Motivated by recent experimental results, we investigated the process of microsphere formation in a glass/metal hybrid microfiber
Finite Element Method (FEM) simulations were performed in order to investigate, for in a glass/metal hybrid microfiber

Summary

Introduction

The need for tailoring the properties of optical fibers has resulted in the design and fabrication of hybrid multicomponent material fiber structures. At high temperature processing conditions, a number of instabilities induce various microfluidic phenomena leading in turn to formation of various embedded microstructures. The understanding of those phenomena is crucial, as it would help either to avoid such structures or help in their tailored fabrication, setting the motivation for their theoretical investigation. The choice of materials with compatible properties, such as melting and working points, is crucial in order to successfully draw uniform and low loss fibers.

Methods

Results

Conclusion