Alloys of sulphur, selenium and tellurium, often referred to as chalcogenide semiconductors offer a highly versatile, compositionally-controllable material platform for a variety of passive and active photonic applications. They are optically nonlinear, photoconductive materials with wide transmission windows that present various high- and low-index dielectric, low-epsilon and plasmonic properties across ultra-violet, visible and infrared frequencies, in addition to an ultra-fast, non-volatile, electrically-/optically-induced switching capability between phase states with markedly different electromagnetic properties. This roadmap collection presents an in-depth account of the critical role that chalcogenide semiconductors play within various traditional and emerging photonic technology platforms. The potential of this field going forward is demonstrated by presenting context and outlook on selected socioeconomically important research streams utilizing chalcogenide semiconductors. To this end, this roadmap encompasses selected topics that range from systematic design of material properties and switching kinetics to device level nanostructuring and integration within various photonic system architectures.
We demonstrate a gradient-index (GRIN) optofluidic waveguide using polydimethylsiloxane cured with a radial variation of temperature. The waveguide wraps the microfluidic channel and the GRIN profile localizes the light around it, making the device suitable for evanescent sensing applications. The fabricated waveguide shows good light confinement, with a propagation loss of 1.47 dB/cm at a wavelength of 632.8 nm.
We present a
reflection mode saturable absorber based on nonlinear multimode interference in
a graded index multimode fiber. The saturable absorber provides a modulation
depth of 12% at a low saturation intensity of 18.5 MW/cm<sup>2</sup>. The
all-fiber structure and reflection mode design of this saturable absorber makes
it an ideal device for the fabrication of fiber lasers with linear resonant
cavity. When inserted in a linear laser cavity comprising a thulium doped fiber
as the gain medium, the saturable absorber triggers modelocked noise like
pulses with a center wavelength of 1905 nm and spectral width of 11.2 nm.
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