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Scientists at Bath University in the UK have discovered a way of speeding up the production of high capacity hollow-core optical fibres. The procedure cuts the production time of the fibres from around a week to a single day, significantly reducing the overall cost of fabrication.
Initial tests show the fibre is also superior in virtually every respect to previous versions of the technology. The researchers say this makes it an important step in the development of new technologies that use light instead of electrical circuits to carry data, including faster optical telecommunications, more powerful and accurate laser machining, and cheaper generation of X-ray or ultraviolet light for use in biomedical and surgical optics.
In standard optical fibres, light travels in a small cylindrical core of glass running down the length of the fibre. Over a certain distance pulses of light “leak” out and become attenuated. In addition, the glass core can be damaged if there is too much light.
In hollow core fibres the light travels down the central air hole and cannot leak out. The problem is constructing a fibre that is able to trap the light within the core.
The procedure developed by the Bath photonics group involves narrowing the wall of glass around the large central hole by just a hundred nanometers, which has the effect of increasing the number of different wavelengths that can be transmitted.
The improved fibre was developed as part of a European Commission-funded Framework 6 project ‘NextGenPCF’ for applications in gas sensing.
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