Optical fibers are used extensively for data transmission systems because of their dielectric nature and their large information‐carrying capacity. Network architectures using multiple wavelength channels per optical fiber are utilized in local, metropolitan, or wide‐area applications to connect thousands of users having a wide range of transmission capacities and speeds. A powerful aspect of an optical communication link is that many different wavelengths can be sent along a fiber simultaneously in the 1300‐to‐1600‐ nm spectrum. The technology of combining a number of wavelengths onto the same fiber is known as wavelength division multiplexing (WDM). The concept of WDM used in conjunction with optical amplifiers has resulted in communication links that allow rapid communications between users in countries all over the world.

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Abstract. Optical fiber technology has significantly bolstered the growth of photonics applications in basic life sciences research and in biomedical diagnosis, therapy, monitoring, and surgery. The unique operational characteristics of diverse fibers have been exploited to realize advanced biomedical functions in areas such as illumination, imaging, minimally invasive surgery, tissue ablation, biological sensing, and tissue diagnosis. This review paper provides the necessary background to understand how optical fibers function, to describe the various categories of available fibers, and to illustrate how specific fibers are used for selected biomedical photonics applications. Research articles and vendor data sheets were consulted to describe the operational characteristics of conventional and specialty multimode and single-mode solid-core fibers, double-clad fibers, hard-clad silica fibers, conventional hollow-core fibers, photonic crystal fibers, polymer optical fibers, side-emitting and side-firing fibers, middle-infrared fibers, and optical fiber bundles. Representative applications from the recent literature illustrate how various fibers can be utilized in a wide range of biomedical disciplines. In addition to helping researchers refine current experimental setups, the material in this review paper will help conceptualize and develop emerging optical fiber-based diagnostic and analysis tools.

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Optical whispering gallery mode (WGM) microresonators have attracted great attention due to their remarkable properties such as extremely high quality factor, small mode volume, tight confinement of modes, and strong evanescent field. All these properties of WGM microresonators have ensured their great potentials for applications, such as physical sensors, bio/chemical sensors and microlasers. In this mini-review, the key parameters and coupling conditions of WGM microresonators are firstly introduced. The geometries of WGM optical microcavities are presented based on their fabrication methods. This is followed by the discussion on the state-of-the-art applications of WGM microresonators in sensors and microlasers.

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We have designed photodetectors and UV field emitters based on a combination of ZnO nanowires/nanorods (ZNRs) and bilayer diamond films in a metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) structure. The ZNRs were fabricated on different diamond films and systematic investigations showed an ultra-high photoconductive response from ZNRs prepared on ultrananocrystalline diamond (UNCD) operating at a lower voltage of 2 V. We found that the ZNRs/UNCD photodetector (PD) has improved field emission properties and a reduced turn-on field of 2.9 V μm(-1) with the highest electron field emission (EFE) by simply illuminating the sample with ultraviolet (UV) light. The photoresponse (Iphoto /Idark ) behavior of the ZNRs/UNCD PD exhibits a much higher photoresponse (912) than bare ZNRs (229), ZNRs/nanocrystalline diamond (NCD; 518), and ZNRs/microcrystalline diamond (MCD; 325) under illumination at λ=365 nm. A photodetector with UNCD films offers superior stability and a longer lifetime compared with carbon materials and bare ZNRs. The lifetime stability of the ZNRs/UNCD-based device is about 410 min, which is markedly superior to devices that use bare ZNRs (92 min). The ZNRs/UNCD PD possesses excellent photoresponse properties with improved lifetime and stability; in addition, ZNRs/UNCD-based UV emitters have great potential for applications such as cathodes in flat-panel displays and microplasma display devices.

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