Abstract.A broad review is given of microstructured fiber optics components -light guides, image guides, multicapillary arrays, and photonic crystal fibers -fabricated using the stack-and-draw method from various in-house synthesized oxide soft glasses at the Glass Department of the Institute of Electronic Materials Technology (ITME). The discussion covers fundamental aspects of stack-and-draw technology used at ITME, through design methods, soft glass material issues and parameters, to demonstration of representative examples of fabricated structures and an experimental characterization of their optical properties and results obtained in typical applications. Specifically, demonstrators include microstructured image guides providing resolution of up to 16000 pixels sized up to 20 µm in diameter, and various photonic crystal fibers (PCFs): index-guiding regular lattice air-hole PCFs, hollow core photonic bandgap PCFs, or specialty PCFs like highly birefringent microstructured fibers or highly nonlinear fibers for supercontinuum generation. The presented content is put into context of previous work in the area reported by the group of authors, as well as other research teams.

In this paper we report on the fabrication of a photonic crystal fiber with nanoporous core made of in-house synthesized silicate glass. The fiber uses three rings of holes around a core with a diameter of 4.7 μm. It effectively guides two modes with broadband flat normal dispersion and zero dispersion wavelengths at 1.0 and 1.6 μm. We have demonstrated supercontinuum generation in the range 600 – 940 nm with a spectral flatness variation below 8 dB when a fiber sample 23 cm long is pumped with 60 fs pulses with a central wavelength of 806 nm and pulse energy of 2.4 nJ.

In the paper, we report on the development of a synthesis and melting method of phosphate glasses designed for active microstructured fiber manufacturing. Non-doped glass synthesized in a P2O5-Al2O3-BaO-ZnO-MgO-Na2O oxide system served as the matrix material; meanwhile, the glass was doped with 6 mol% (18 wt%) of Yb2O3, as fiber core. The glasses were well-fitted in relation to optical (refractive index) and thermal proprieties (thermal expansion coefficient, rheology). The fiber with the Yb3+-doped core, with a wide internal photonic microstructure for a laser pump, as well as with a high relative hole size in the photonic outer air-cladding, was produced. The laser built on the basis of this fiber enabled achieving 8.07 W of output power with 20.5% slope efficiency against the launched pump power, in single-mode operation M2 = 1.59, from a 53 cm-long cavity.

We demonstrate a single-mode 6 cm long, phosphate fiber laser with maximum power of 9.0 W. Laser action output power per fiber length of 150 W m−1 was achieved and this is the highest value ever reported in a single-mode fiber laser using a phosphate glass fiber. The slope efficiency of the laser was 36.2% and lasing wavelength was 1028 nm. We used a 6% mol ytterbium-doped, air-clad photonic crystal fiber with the core of 30 µm in diameter. Estimated pump absorption in the fiber exceeded 400 dB m−1.

The subwavelength structure of the core of a photonic crystal fibre can modify its dispersion characteristic and significantly shift the zero dispersion wavelength. The dispersion properties of photonic crystal fibres with core structures made of a 2D lattice of subwavelength air holes and various glass inclusions are studied. We show that a modification of the core structure can give flat dispersion over a range of over 300 nm and can shift the zero dispersion wavelength over 700 nm while the core diameter and photonic cladding remain unchanged. The developed photonic crystal fibre with nanorod core has successfully demonstrated supercontinuum generation in NIR.