Powder-in-Tube Reactive Molten-Core Fabrication of Glass-Clad BaO-TiO2-SiO2 Glass-Ceramic Fibers.

Shuo Yang,Hanna Heyl,Gary Pickrell,Daniel Homa,Anbo Wang

doi:10.3390/ma13020395

Abstract

In this paper we report the fabrication of glass-clad BaO-TiO2-SiO2 (BTS) glass–ceramic fibers by powder-in-tube reactive molten-core drawing and successive isothermal heat treatment. Upon drawing, the inserted raw powder materials in the fused silica tubing melt and react with the fused silica tubing (housing tubing) via dissolution and diffusion interactions. During the drawing process, the fused silica tubing not only serves as a reactive crucible, but also as a fiber cladding layer. The formation of the BTS glass–ceramic structure in the core was verified by micro-Raman spectroscopy after the successive isothermal heat treatment. Second-harmonic generation and blue-white photoluminescence were observed in the fiber using 1064 nm and 266 nm picosecond laser irradiation, respectively. Therefore, the BTS glass–ceramic fiber is a promising candidate for all fiber based second-order nonlinear and photoluminescence applications. Moreover, the powder-in-tube reactive molten core method offers a more efficient and intrinsic contamination-free approach to fabricate glass–ceramic fibers.

Highlights

Since the introduction of optical fibers in the 1960s, optical fibers have shown an increased demand in various applications, such as in communications, lasers, and sensing, owing to its compact size, strong light confinement, and long interaction length [1,2,3]
Due to the amorphous nature of glass, optical glass fibers generally do not exhibit second-order optical nonlinearity, which is crucial to many devices, such as frequency doublers, electro-optic modulators, and the generation of entangled photon pairs [4]
Efforts have been made to overcome this obstacle by using thermal poling of glass fibers [5,6,7] and the fabrication of crystalline fibers [8,9,10]

Summary

Introduction

Since the introduction of optical fibers in the 1960s, optical fibers have shown an increased demand in various applications, such as in communications, lasers, and sensing, owing to its compact size, strong light confinement, and long interaction length [1,2,3]. Efforts have been made to overcome this obstacle by using thermal poling of glass fibers [5,6,7] and the fabrication of crystalline fibers [8,9,10]. The first approach induces an effective second-order nonlinearity by the combination of a frozen-in DC field and intrinsic third-order nonlinearity. Since it relies on higher-order nonlinearity and non-uniform distribution of ions, the induced second-order nonlinearity is usually relatively weak and unstable upon heat or strong light irradiation. The second approach fabricates common nonlinear crystals into the fiber, such as

Methods

Results

Conclusion