Sol-gel Optical Fibre

Abstract

The aim of thesis is to explore the possible effects of sol-gel on the performance offibre optics. It mainly contains three parts of the work. The first part was to filldesigned fibres that have only single claddings with aerogel in the centre core. Theaerogel core acted as an optical waveguide and the near field patterns of light inaerogel were observed, which showed that the light could be guided in the infraredregion by total internal reflection. This phenomenon was in conformity with thetheoretical analysis. The second part of work was to fabricate a thin layer crack-freesilica film coated fibres after an aging process in methanol atmosphere for 12h with athickness of approximately 600nm. A comparative refractive index of 1.30 wasmeasured by depositing a thin film on a silica plan glass using the same procedure.The third part of the work was an extension of the second part, which was to form asilica thin film around tapers to control the distance between two tapers thatdominated the coupling efficiency. The experimental designs of these threeexperiments were proposed, along with the results discussed, especially the positivefilling design that would provide an efficient way of filling dopants in hollow corefibres.

Date of Award	9 Oct 2013
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Tim Birks (Supervisor)