Glasses for Photonic Applications

Abstract

Recent advances in the application of glassy materials in planar and fiber‐based photonic structures have led to novel devices and components that go beyond the original thinking of the use of glass in the 1960s, when glass fibers were developed for low‐loss, optical communication applications. Exploitation of the material's compositional flexibility, combined with the ability to tailor all aspects of its size, shape, and physical properties as well as its behavior when exposed to all forms of electromagnetic radiation, has led to numerous breakthroughs. Thus, for the purposes of this review, we have divided the discussion to highlight issues of material composition and form and how both impact device function, focusing on the advances made within the past decades.

Grand Challenges in Glass Science

“…The demand for internet communication bandwidth continues to rise; optical interconnects made of glass and other glass-based photonic devices will be essential for controlling the flow of information in the next generation of information technology (Richardson et al, 2010;Li et al, 2014).…”

Predicting the drawing conditions for Microstructured Optical Fiber fabrication

“…Silica is known to be reliable under a range of processing and use environments, with relatively better mechanical and thermal stability [37]. Highly homogeneous, high purity bulk material is commercially available, which has led to silica telecom fibers regularly being made with low loss (⇠0.2 dB/km at NIR wavelengths) [38].…”

Novel polymer functionalization method for exposed-core optical fiber

“…Both polymer and silica have properties that make them attractive for optical fiber sensing applications [13,14]. Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer optical fibers (POFs) have high elastic strain limits, high fracture toughness, and high flexibility in bending, however high attenuation properties and difficulties with splicing, cleaving and coupling makes small core size POF sensors challenging [14][15][16][17].…”

“…Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) polymer optical fibers (POFs) have high elastic strain limits, high fracture toughness, and high flexibility in bending, however high attenuation properties and difficulties with splicing, cleaving and coupling makes small core size POF sensors challenging [14][15][16][17]. On the other hand, silica is known to be reliable under a range of processing and use environments, with relatively better mechanical and thermal stability [13]. Highly homogeneous, high purity bulk material is commercially available, which has led to the development of low loss silica telecom fibers [18].…”