Chalcogenide Microstructured Optical Fibers for Mid-Infrared Supercontinuum Generation: Interest, Fabrication, and Applications

Abstract

The mid-infrared spectral region is of great technical and scientific importance in a variety of research fields and applications. Among these studies, mid-infrared supercontinuum generation has attracted strong interest in the last decade, because of unique properties such as broad wavelength coverage and high coherence, among others. In this paper, the intrinsic optical properties of different types of glasses and fibers are presented. It turns out that microstructured chalcogenide fibers are ideal choices for the generation of mid-infrared supercontinua. The fabrication procedures of chalcogenide microstructured fibers are introduced, including purification methods of the glass, rod synthesis processes, and preform realization techniques. In addition, supercontinua generated in chalcogenide microstructured fibers employing diverse pump sources and configurations are enumerated. Finally, the potential of supercontinua for applications in mid-infrared imaging and spectroscopy is shown.

Super‐Continuum Generation in Graphene‐Based Chalcogenide Slot Waveguide

“…[15,[18][19][20] On the other hand, waveguides provide integration, and hence, different types of waveguides have been considered for SCG, so far. [21][22][23][24] Recently, chalcogenide (ChG) glasses composed of the chalcogen (S, Se, and Te) and metalloid (Ge, As, Sb, and Ga) elements have attracted the attention of scientists in mid-infrared (Mid-IR) SCG [25][26][27] due to its appealing features such as lower two-photon absorption, high resilient to crystallization, higher Kerr coefficient (≈200 times higher than SiO 2 ), higher linear refractive index, and wide spectral transparency compared to fluoride, [28] tellurite, [29] and lead silicate. [30] SCG in the Mid-IR range, particularly in the range of 3 to 15 μm is highly desired due to its application in spectroscopy since the majority of molecules possess strong vibrational absorption in this spectral range.…”

Soft infrared optoelectronic fibers for modulation and recording of neural activity

“…24,28 However, due to the low infrared (IR) performance of standard optical polymer, INM usually relies on silica and silicon implants 29,30 or, if longer wavelengths are needed, soft glass fibers 31,32 able to transmit in the mid-IR range. [33][34][35][36] In this work, we discuss the development of a soft infrared optical fiber based on non-standard high performance optical polymers, fluorinated ethylene propylene (FEP) 37 and polysulfone (PSU). This fiber, which is able to transmit infrared light in the spectral region in which water exhibits strong absorption (> 1800 nm), has been used as the main component for the development of brain-compatible optoelectronic neural interfaces able to simultaneously activate neurons by INM and record the generated neural activity through integrated metallic electrodes.…”

Analysis and design of dispersion-engineered cascaded channel waveguide for mid-infrared supercontinuum generation employing pump source at telecommunication wavelength

“…The design of SC light sources, in detecting air pollution [4] and tracing hazardous components [5] through atmospheric molecules absorption bands in the MIR spectrum range, have grown interest among the researchers in recent years. To date, an intense amount of research has concentrated on spanning the wavelength over MIR in the range 2-20 µm as the molecular fingerprint region has fallen in this range which covers up the various crucial MIR applications [6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16].…”

“…In recent decades, exploration of the SC generation theoretically and experimentally were performed in the MIR through different kinds of highly nonlinear materials: chalcogenides (ChG) [10,11] and tellurides [17,18] glass systems. The efficient SC generation in the MIR have successfully demonstrated up to 14 µm by ChG [10] and 15 µm by telluride material [18] based fiber systems.…”