Silica Fibre Fabrication

Research themes and services

Explore the main application areas on which our research focuses, and the services we offer.

Research themes

Fibre for high-power lasers and amplifiers  

  • Large mode area (LMA) fibres
  • Active dopants
  • Double clad
  • Low NA
  • Photodarkening-free
  • Active dopants – Ytterbium, Neodymium, Erbium, Erbium and Ytterbium, Thulium, Holmium 
  • Novel structures and glass compositions to improve thresholds for non-linear effects and mode instability, and laser efficiency 

New laser/amplifier wavelengths 

  • Active dopants – Thulium, Holmium, Erbium, Neodymium, Ytterbium, Praseodymium, Samarium, Dysprosium, Gadolinium
  • Bismuth doped fibres, covering a wide wavelength range 
  • Novel geometry fibres
  • Fibre materials research and spectroscopy of doped fibres 

Novel fibres for sensing, non-linear optics, Bragg gratings, and wide-band telecoms 

  • Highly non-linear fibres
  • Poled silica fibres 
  • Photosensitive fibres 
  • Ultra-high and low linear birefringence
  • Circular birefringence and Spun fibres
  • Multi-core, few-moded and multi-element active and passive fibres

Services we offer

We offer a wide range of speciality optical fibres enabled by technology development and state-of-the-art fibre fabrication facilities.

These have a range of applications, including:

  • high-power lasers and amplifiers
  • sensing
  • telecommunications
  • scientific research