We report the fabrication of a microstructured optical fiber drawn from a soft glass 3D printed preform. For this proof of concept, a chalcogenide glass that is well known for its capability to be shaped at low temperature and its mid-infrared transmission was selected: Te20As30Se50. The obtained negative curvature hollow core fiber shows several transmission bands in the 2–12 µm range that are reproduced numerically using finite element-based simulations and coupled mode theory.

The GeS2-Ga2S3 vitreous matrix can incorporate metal halides in its network allowing the properties of the glasses to be adjusted following the composition. In this work, different systems containing either CsCl, CsI, CdCl2, or CdI2 are investigated in order to determine the compositions having the most suitable properties for drawing a step-index fibre. Indeed, transition glass temperatures and optical parameters such as the optical band-gap, the linear and nonlinear refractive indexes are given. The preforms were prepared using the rod-in-tube technique and multimode step-index fibres were successfully drawn. This initial work led from these glass families, which also show both the possibility to be rare-earth doped and to be permanently photo-written by a femtosecond laser, paves the way to a future mid-IR laser fibre.

In this work, an original way of shaping chalcogenide optical components has been investigated. Thorough evaluation of the properties of chalcogenide glasses before and after 3D printing has been carried out in order to determine the impact of the 3D additive manufacturing process on the material. In order to evaluate the potential of such additive glass manufacturing, several preliminary results obtained with various chalcogenide objects and components, such as cylinders, beads, drawing preforms and sensors, are described and discussed. This innovative 3D printing method opens the way for many applications involving chalcogenide fiber elaboration, but also many other chalcogenide glass optical devices.

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