Optical fibre nanowire technology and applications

Abstract

-A review of optical fibre nanowires and their applications is presented. 3) Extreme flexibility and configurability: OFNs show an extraordinary mechanical strength and can easily be bent and manipulated. Bend radii of the order of a few microns can be readily achieved with relatively low induced bend loss [2, 24] allowing for highly compact devices with complex geometry e.g. 3D multi-ring resonators [16][17][18][19][20]. 4) Low-loss interconnection to other optical fibres and fiberised components: OFNs are fabricated by adiabatically stretching optical fibres and thus preserve the original dimensions of the optical fibre at their input and output allowing ready splicing to standard fibres. This allows for an efficient confinement of power [25] and represents a significant advantage when compared to small-core microstructured fibres that always present significant insertion/extraction losses. Moreover, these fibre pigtails have macroscopic dimensions and allow the manipulation of a single nanowire without the expensive instrumentation typical of the nanoscience and nanotechnology worlds. IntroductionFor the manufacture of sensors and devices the most attractive of the OFN properties is the large evanescent field. When the fibre diameter becomes smaller than the wavelength of the light propagating in it, diffraction dominates and a considerable fraction of the power propagates outside the physical fibre boundary.