Flexible delivery of Er:YAG radiation at 294 µm with negative curvature silica glass fibers: a new solution for minimally invasive surgical procedures

Abstract

We present the delivery of high energy microsecond pulses through a hollow-core negative-curvature fiber at 2.94 µm. The energy densities delivered far exceed those required for biological tissue manipulation and are of the order of 2300 J/cm2. Tissue ablation was demonstrated on hard and soft tissue in dry and aqueous conditions with no detrimental effects to the fiber or catastrophic damage to the end facets. The energy is guided in a well confined single mode allowing for a small and controllable focused spot delivered flexibly to the point of operation. Hence, a mechanically and chemically robust alternative to the existing Er:YAG delivery systems is proposed which paves the way for new routes for minimally invasive surgical laser procedures.

Revolver Hollow Core Optical Fibers

“…In the figure legend, the plotted experimental data are indexed by numbers in round brackets followed by references to literature in square brackets. More details are given in the text [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35]. [36] and in chalcogenide fibers at a wavelength of up to 6.5 µm [37,38].…”

Low-loss single-mode hollow-core fiber with anisotropic anti-resonant elements

“…Applications include high-power [4] and ultra-short pulse delivery [5], pulse compression [6], mid-IR transmission [7], telecommunication [8] and terahertz applications [9]. The hollow-core photonic band gap (HC-PBG) fiber is a common HCF, which guides light in the air-core using a 2D periodic cladding structure showing a photonic band gap [1].…”

Bend loss in multimode chalcogenide fiber at infrared wavelengths

“…For example, the onset of significant bending losses for ∼100-μm core fibers varies with bending diameters of ∼100 mm in fluoride fibers, 3,4 ∼100 mm in metal-coated hollow guides (with 530-μm bore, and higher for smaller bores), 5 and 300 mm for hollow core inhibited coupling fibers. 6 Chalcogenide fibers can withstand high-peak mid-infared laser power [7][8][9] with over 1 GW∕cm 2 (for nanosecond pulses) incident on the front face. 10 To date, significant efforts have been dedicated to this fiber system with research spanning methods to improve coupling through reduction in reflection loss 11 and modal matching, 12 impact of nonlinear absorption and optical scattering, 13 as well as design of complex singlecomponent microstructured fibers.…”