Clemson University researchers say sapphire is better for fiber optics than silica used now. Image: John Ballato, Clemson University |
Clemson University researchers are taking common materials to
uncommon places by transforming easily obtainable and affordable materials into
fiber. Their findings are published in Nature
Photonics.
“We have used a highly purified version of beach sand (silica)
for fiber for the last 40 years,” said John Ballato, director of the Center for
Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies at Clemson University. “As a matter of fact, the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for the
development of silica optical fibers. However, while silica has done remarkably
well over time, it is now being pushed to its limits for faster and cheaper
data and new functionality.”
It has gotten to the point where there is so much light packed
in fiber cable that the silica material essentially can’t handle the intensity
and has actually begun interacting and rebelling.
“At high power, the light causes the atoms of the material to
vibrate more violently and those vibrations convert some of the light energy
into sound energy which restricts the ability of the fiber to carry more
power,” said Ballato. “This, in turn, lessens the amount of light that can
travel through the fiber, which limits the amount of information that can be
sent for telecommunications uses and power for high-energy laser applications.”
The demand for stronger and more durable fiber material is greater
than ever and will only increase with technological advancement. Clemson
researchers are focusing on providing a material solution for fiber optics,
especially one that can be sold commercially. Their goal is to take a robust,
affordable, and easily accessible material that can take the brunt of greater
intensity and convert that material into a fiber.
Ballato and his team found that sapphire possesses extraordinary
properties that make it exceptionally valuable for high power lasers in which
the light intensity interacts with sound waves in the glass and leads to
diminished power-handling capabilities.
“Sapphire is new and different in this sense because we’re able
to use a low-cost and widely used commodity as a fiber,” said Ballato. “Sapphire is scalable, acceptable and is a material that people don’t think
about when it comes to fiber optics. The problem is that sapphire’s crystalline
structure is not amenable to making into optical fiber using commercially
accepted methods.”
Ballato actually developed the sapphire fiber to withstand
greater intensity and be more useful for high-energy applications than typical
commercial fibers.
“Ballato’s recent results with sapphire fibers represent a
paradigm-shifting development in the field of fiber optics,” said Siddarth
Ramachandran, associate professor in the electrical and computer engineering at
Boston University and an expert in the field. “Materials long considered
to be used only in the realm of free-space optics can now be exploited in fiber
geometries, which enable long interaction lengths and novel nonlinear optical
effects.”
“This research is paving the way for everyday commodities to be
imagined for technological uses such as fiber optics,” Ballato said. “We’re
performing additional studies with sapphire and other materials that have
similar effects for fiber.”
Source: Clemson University
