Silicate all-solid photonic crystal fibers with a glass high index contrast

Abstract

An all-solid photonic crystal fiber can be developed using two thermally matched glasses with one glass forming the background, and the other the lattice of inclusions. Optical properties of all-solid holey fibers (SOHO) are sensitive to the photonic cladding configuration, much the same as PCFs with air holes, and strongly depend on dispersion properties of the materials used. When a high index contrast between the glasses is assured photonic crystal fiber can effectively guide light with photonic band gap mechanism. This can be easily achieved when multicomponent soft glass is used for fiber fabrication. We report on new developments of F2/NC-21 silicate all-glass PCFs. F2 is a commercially available glass (Schott Inc.) with a high concentration of lead-oxide (PbO=45.5%) and the refractive index nD=1.619. It can be used both as the background material and as a material for micro-rods (inclusions). A borosilicate glass (B2O3=26.0%) NC-21 glass has been synthesized in-house at IEMT. NC21 has the index nD=1.533 and was used as the material for micro-rods (inclusions) or as a background glass in the structures. The two selected glasses have a high index contrast equal to 0,084 at 1,55μm wavelength. In this report we present new results on optimization of the filling factor d/Λ and reduction of the lattice pitch Λ necessary to obtain efficient guidance at 1.55 μm. The numerical analysis of SOHO F2/NC21 fibers has been carried out using a full-vector mode solver based on the plane-wave expansion method. In our paper we report on photonic crystal fibers with two guiding mechanisms: an effective index with a high index core (low index inclusions made of NC21 glass and F2 used as a background glass) and a photonic band gap with a low index core (high index inclusions made of F2 glass and NC21 used as a background glass).