Competence Center for Specialty Optical Fibers

We describe a laser drilling technology suitable for structuring solid glass preforms for microstructured optical fibers. This technology offers the possibility to prepare complex preform designs that cannot be easily managed by the stack-and-draw technology. As a proof of concept, we present a four-ring hexagonal hole structure drilled in a silica rod over a length of 80mm. A fiber drawn from such a preform has been analyzed to demonstrate the feasibility of this concept.