2022/03/01 by Toney Teddy Fernandez, B Johnston, Fernandez, T Toney +15 · 1 citation
Engineering · #78A60 #Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Laser Material Processing Techniques #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Optics (physics.optics) #Photonic and Optical Devices #Semiconductor Lasers and Optical Devices
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.00215
openalex publication_date 2022/03/01 · openalex created_date 2022/04/03 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Zirconium fluoride (ZBLAN) glass, the standard material used in fiber-based mid-infrared photonics, has been re-designed to enable the fabrication of high index-contrast low-loss waveguides via femtosecond laser direct writing. We demonstrate that in contrast to pure ZBLAN, a positive index change of close to 10-2 can be induced in hybrid zirconium/hafnium (Z/HBLAN) glasses during ultrafast laser inscription and show that this can be explained by an electron cloud distortion effect that is driven by the existence of two glass formers with contrasting polarizability. High numerical aperture (NA) type-I waveguides that support a well confined 3.1 μm wavelength mode with a mode-field diameter (MFD) as small as 12 μm have successfully been fabricated. These findings open the door for the fabrication of mid-infrared integrated photonic devices that can readily be pigtailed to existing ZBLAN fibers.