Optoelectronic Fibers via Selective Amplification of In‐Fiber Capillary Instabilities

Abstract

Thermally drawn metal-insulator-semiconductor fibers provide a scalable path to functional fibers. Here, a ladder-like metal-semiconductor-metal photodetecting device is formed inside a single silica fiber in a controllable and scalable manner, achieving a high density of optoelectronic components over the entire fiber length and operating at a bandwidth of 470 kHz, orders of magnitude larger than any other drawn fiber device.

Integrated Fiber Flow Sensors for Microfluidic Interconnects

“…The basic structure of an integrated thermal flow sensor in a fiber is shown in Figure , which is fabricated using a thermal drawing process that has recently been demonstrated for a variety of sensors and actuators for light, heat, and sound . We take advantage of the exceptional aspect ratios and dimensional control of this processing technique to place an extraordinarily long and thin polymer hot film adjacent to a hollow core that serves as a fluid channel.…”

In-Fiber Structured Particles and Filament Arrays from the Perspective of Fluid Instabilities

“…For example, with the ultra-smooth surface resulted from fluid instability, spherical, or sphere-based chalcogenide-glass particles [35] or Si spheres [33] with tapered optical fiber can be assembled to build high Q-factor microresonator. Besides, selectively heating can transform the middle semiconducting core of a tri-core fiber into a train of spherical particles, which bridges the side carbon polyethylene composite [42] or metal [43] electrodes, therefore constructing long but discrete photodetecting devices. This general in-fiber fluid instability was also explored to fabricate metal nanoparticles [44] and well-dispersed metal-polymer nanocomposite [45].…”

“…d Fabrication of optoelectronic fibers based on break-to-contact approach [43]. Reproduced with permission [43]. Copyright 2017, WileyVCH.…”

“…For electrical connection in the fiber, the semiconductor spheres with larger diameters than the core would create contacts onto the continuous electrode cores directly, forming a fully functional in-fiber optoelectronic device. On the basis of the above principles, As 2 Se 5 core/carbon polyethylene composite electrodes [42] and germanium core/platinum electrodes optoelectronic fibers [43] have been achieved. The breakto-contact technology can create ∼ 10 4 self-assemble and entirely packaged spherical photodetecting devices per meter of the fiber.…”

Ultraflexible Glassy Semiconductor Fibers for Thermal Sensing and Positioning

“…Multimaterial fibers integrate a multiplicity of functional components into one fiber to share the basic device attributes of their traditional bulk counterparts, yet are fabricated using conventional preform-based fiber-processing methods, yielding kilometers of flexible functional fiber devices which can be also assembled to large-scale and flexible multifunctional fabrics. [22][23][24][25][26] Here, we present the realization of thermal sensing in arbitrarily long and flexible fiber-like devices by thermally co-drawing semiconducting glass as the core and thermoplastic polymer as the cladding. The resulting TE fibers exhibit large Seebeck coefficients and high thermal conductivity, working as a thermal sensor in a wide temperature range up to 150 °C with the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 4 measurement resolution as high as 0.05 °C.…”