An innovative hollow-core fiber with anti-resonant arches (HC-ARA) is designed and made of chalcogenide glass As2S3. The HC-ARA fiber has a single layer of eight non-touching curved arches, each one being solidly attached at two locations on the outer solid region to prevent any lateral displacement and to preserve the arches’ shape and uniformity during the fabrication process. The thickness and spacing between the arches are selected to minimize the fiber transmission loss <0.1 dB/m for CO2 laser at 10.6 micron. Also the higher order modes of the HC-ARA fiber are more attenuated than the fundamental mode, so the fiber is effectively single mode after only a few meters. The HC-ARA preform is made by extrusion of chalcogenide glass through a die specifically designed to produce the anti-resonant arches. The extruded HC-ARA preform is pulled in a fiber using photonic crystal fiber draw techniques. Recent simulation and experimental results on the HC-ARA fiber are presented to illustrate a novel fiber solution for CO2 laser transmission at 10.6 micron.
High-precision chalcogenide molded freeform micro-lenses were designed and produced to perfectly collimate and circularize mid-infrared Quantum Cascade Lasers (QCLs). The innovative micro-lens has an input surface with freeform contour to simultaneously converge the fast axis and further diverge the slow axis, while the output freeform surface collimates both axes. The 5-mm long freeform lens is such that the collimated output fast- and slow-axis beams are circular. This paper presents recent results on the chalcogenide molded freeform micro-lens prototypes specifically designed to collimate and circularize QCL at 9 micron.
High-purity chalcogenide glasses and fiber draw processes enable the production of state-of-the-art mid-infrared fibers for 1.5 to 10 micron transmission. Multimode and single-mode mid-infrared fibers are produced with low-loss (<0.2 dB/m), high tensile strength (>25 kpsi), and high power laser handling capability (>11.8 MW/cm2). Chalcogenide fibers support the development of cutting-edge devices for mid-infrared medical applications. Connectorized cables transmit laser power to a sample or mid-infrared radiation to a detector. Broadband antireflection microstructures are thermally stamped on the chalcogenide fiber tip to reduce the surface reflection from 17% to <5%. Also custom fiber-optic probe bundles are made with multiple fiber legs (source, sample, signal) for reflection and backscatter spectroscopy measurement. For example, a 7 x 1 fiber probe bundle is presented. Additionally imaging fiber bundle is made to perform remote thermal and spectral imaging. Square preforms are drawn, stacked, squared and fused multiple times to produce a 64 x 64 imaging fiber bundle with fiber pixel size of 34 microns and the numerical aperture of 0.3. The 2- meter long imaging fiber bundle is small (2.2 mm x 2.2 mm), flexible (bend radius >10 mm) and transmits over the spectral range of 1.5 to 6.5 micron.
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