Κατασκευή και υβριδισμός φωτονικών μικροϊνών

Hybrid silica nanowires are fabricated and characterized at the Photonics Laboratory. The Laboratory has a proven track record of low-loss deposition on silica tapered fibers. The Laboratory hosts a specially designed platform that incorporates the fiber tapering process (by heating and stretching) and the deposition and processing of sol-gel and polymer based thin-films. The processes of tapering and layering are motorized and computer controlled (see below). Real-time transmission spectra are also acquired for the monitoring of the whole fabrication procedure (tapering – layer deposition – annealing – packaging). Using this technique, we have demonstrated, in the past, very sensitive fiber sensors for sea water monitoring.

Optical microfibers embedded in PDMS for tuneable dispersion management

The thermo-optic effect of a polymer matrix has been used for fiber Group Velocity Dispersion (GVD) tuning for the first time. Our work extends the use of tapered fibers for GVD management since the interplay between the structural dimensions of the tapered fiber with the thermo-optic control of the surrounding refractive index provides extra degrees of freedom for fine, wide, broadband and reversible GVD control in tapered microfibers. Our proposed idea is very modular and it can be used as a dispersion management toolbox since two or more of these devices can be connected together to allow for versatile dispersion tailoring. This versatility in dispersion management can be of great interest for ultrafast fiber laser cavities.

Fiber dispersion measurement rig

A state-of-the-art, fiber based, Mach-Zehnder Interferometer (MZI) has been developed in our lab for fiber and waveguide dispersion measurements as shown below.

Key Publications

Journal of Lightwave Technology 2020, 38, 4086

Proc. SPIE, Nonlinear Frequency Generation and Conversion: Materials, Devices, and Applications XIV 2015, 9347, 93471Y