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Development of low‐loss lead‐germanate glass for mid‐infrared fiber optics: II. preform extrusion and fiber fabrication
Author(s) -
Wang Pengfei,
Ng Alson Kwun Leung,
Dowler Alastair,
EbendorffHeidepriem Heike
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of the american ceramic society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.9
H-Index - 196
eISSN - 1551-2916
pISSN - 0002-7820
DOI - 10.1111/jace.17518
Subject(s) - germanate , materials science , fabrication , extrusion , glass fiber , fiber , composite material , optical fiber , all silica fiber , glass production , absorption (acoustics) , optics , optoelectronics , plastic optical fiber , fiber optic sensor , doping , medicine , alternative medicine , physics , pathology
Abstract For lead‐germanate glass fibers, reducing the content of hydroxyl (OH) groups and the formation of metallic Pb species is essential to pave the way for their applications as low‐loss mid‐IR fiber optics since OH and metallic Pb species cause intense absorption and scattering loss, respectively, in the mid‐IR spectral range. The first part of this study reported the optimization of the glass melting procedure to obtain low amount of OH while preventing formation of metallic Pb species in lead‐germanate glass. Here, the second part of this study reports the investigation of the process conditions to fabricate low‐loss lead‐germanate glass fiber through further understanding of the co‐effects of glass melting and heat treatment atmospheres on the formation of nano‐ and micron‐scale metallic Pb species in both the as‐produced and heat treated lead‐germanate glasses. Finally, using this advance in knowledge, we successfully fabricated low‐loss lead‐germanate glass fibers with no presence of reduced metallic Pb particles by optimizing dehydration agent, glass melting, preform extrusion and fiber drawing conditions. The optimized fabrication conditions reduced the unstructured fiber loss by almost one order to <0.3 dB/m at 1.55 μm.