With the goal of being able to create optical devices for the telecommunications industry, we investigated the effects of 810-nm, femtosecond laser radiation on various glasses. By focusing the laser beam through a microscope objective, we successfully wrote transparent, but visible, round-elliptical damage lines inside highsilica, borate, soda lime silicate, and f luorozirconate (ZBLAN) bulk glasses. Microellipsometer measurements of the damaged region in the pure and Ge-doped silica glasses showed a 0.01-0.035 refractive-index increase, depending on the radiation dose. The formation of several defects, including Si E' or Ge E' centers, nonbridging oxygen hole centers, and peroxy radicals, was also detected. These results suggest that multiphoton interactions occur in the glasses and that it may be possible to write three-dimensional optical circuits in bulk glasses with such a focused laser beam technique.

We show that permanent optical waveguides can be formed in various bulk glasses by photoinduced refractive index change with an ultrashort pulse laser. The waveguides were fabricated by focusing the laser beam through an microscope objective and translating the sample parallel to the axis of the laser beam. From the observations of intensity distributions in the output of guided light by a CCD camera, we demonstrated that permanent optical waveguides can be successfully formed in various glasses. In addition, from the analysis of a near-field pattern, it was confirmed that single mode waveguides of the graded index type can be formed by a writing technique using the ultrashort pulse laser.

No abstract

Mesoporous titanium dioxide nanosized powder with high specific surface area and anatase wall was synthesized via hydrothermal process by using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) as surfactant-directing agent and pore-forming agent. The resulting materials were characterized by XRD, nitrogen adsorption, FESEM, TEM, and FT-IR spectroscopy. The as-synthesized mesoporous TiO2 nanoparticles have mean diameter of 17.6 nm with mean pore size of 2.1 nm. The specific surface area of the as-synthesized mesoporous nanosized TiO2 exceeded 430 m2/g and that of the samples after calcination at 600 degrees C still have 221.9 m2/g. The mesoporous TiO2 nanoparticles show significant activities on the oxidation of Rhodamine B (RB). The large surface area, small crystalline size, and well-crystallized anatase mesostructure can explain the high photocatalytic activity of mesoporous TiO2 nanoparticles calcined at 400 degrees C.