Chapter 4

FABRICATION OF PHOTONIC CRYSTAL

FIBRES

4.1 INTRODUCTION

The idea of producing optical fibres from a single low-loss material with
microscopic air holes goes back to the early days of optical fibre technology,
and already in 1974 Kaiser et al. [4.1] reported the first results on single-
material silica optical fibres. In the early days - as well as today - the key
issues have been to obtain a desired fibre structure for a given application,
and maintain this structure for very long fibre lengths. It will, generally, be
needed that the fibre attenuation is kept at a rather low level, and the
acceptable attenuation level will be given by the specific application. In this
chapter, we will address the fundamental issues of fabrication of photonic
crystal fibres, by first discussing the most commonly used preform
fabrication method. Secondly, we will report details about the fibre drawing
and coating procedure. Furthermore, we will discuss how additional doping
techniques are needed for providing hybrid fibre types (such as the hole-
assisted lightguide fibre (HALF) [4.6]) combining the approach of micro-
structuring with index-raised doped glass or active dopants such as rare-earth
ions needed for new amplifiers and lasers. The chapter will also shortly
address the issues of photonic crystal fibres in low-melting-point glasses and
polymers.

A. Bjarklev et al., Photonic Crystal Fibres

© Kluwer Academic 2003
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4.2 PRODUCTION OF PHOTONIC CRYSTAL FIBRE

PREFORMS

The traditional way of manufacturing optical fibres involves two main

steps: fabrication of a fibre-preform and drawing of this using a high-
temperature furnace in a tower set-up [4.2]. For conventional silica-based
optical fibres, both techniques that have been developed over the past two-
to-three decades may today be considered very mature (see e.g., [4.3]).
Various vapour deposition techniques have been developed for the
fabrication of fibre preforms (including among others; Modified Chemical
Vapour Deposition (MCVD), Vapour Axial Deposition (VAD), and Outside
Vapour Deposition (OVD) [4.1]). These techniques allow for fabrication of
preforms with silica glasses having very low, un-intentional, impurity levels,
and very precisely controlled doping levels. A common characteristic of
these perform fabrication techniques is, however, that they are tailored for
fabrication of circular-symmetric preforms, and although a very accurate
control over the deposition is obtainable, this may without significant
modifications of the methods only be achieved in radial direction. Therefore,
for fabrication of preforms for photonic crystal fibres, where the transversal
preform morphology often is realized in a circular symmetric structure and
even as it is the case for photonic bandgap fibres with a two dimensional
periodic structure, the above-referenced techniques are not directly
applicable. Preforms for optical fibres having a non-circular symmetry have,
however, been fabricated for several years, e.g., for polarization preserviI1g
fibres, where typically a mechanical post-processing of the circular preforms
is performed. This may be done, e.g., by drilling a very limited number of
holes down the fibre perform and feeding additional material components
into these holes (and provide, e.g., stress-induced refractive index changes in
the core region) or milling/cutting the outer surface of the perform to provide
an outer asymmetry that during drawing gives rise to an asymmetric core
[4.4].
Although drilling of several tens to hundreds of holes in a periodic
arrangement into one final preform may be utilized for fabrication of
photonic crystal fibres, a different - and relatively simple - method has been
developed over the past three to four years. The method typically utilizes a
hand-stacking technique of silica capillary tubes and solid silica rods and
allows relatively fast, low-cost and flexible preform manufacturing. The
method was first presented by Birks et al. in 1996 [4.5], who described the
fabrication of a 2D photonic crystal cladding structure using a method,
where a central hole was drilled into a silica rod. Initially, Birks et al. started
from 25 cm long solid silica rods with a diameter around 3 cm, and used an
ultrasonic drill to form a central hole through these. This production step was