A single crystal sapphire optical fiber has been developed with an optical cladding that is used to reduce the number of modes that propagate in the fiber. This fiber is the first single crystal sapphire photonic crystal fiber ever produced. Fabrication of the optical cladding reduces the number of modes in the fiber by lowering the effective refractive index around the core, which limits the amount of loss. Different fiber designs were analyzed using Comsol Multiphysics to find the modal volumes of each. The MIT Photonic Bands modeling program was used to see if the first photonic band gap fiber could be achieved theoretically. The fibers were qualified using far field pattern and photodetector measurements as well as gas sensing experiments. The fibers were then exposed to a harsh environment of 1000 °C with a coating of alumina to test the resistance to scattering of the fiber. The fibers were also examined using materials characterization equipment to see how the harsh environments impacted the optical and mechanical stability of the bundled fiber. / Ph. D.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/77179 |
| Date | 13 September 2012 |
| Creators | Pfeiffenberger, Neal Thomas |
| Contributors | Materials Science and Engineering, Pickrell, Gary R., Xu, Yong, Reynolds, William T. Jr., Suchicital, Carlos T. A. |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation, Text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | In Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
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