Device fabrication

The Silica Fibre facilties can be commissioned on a daily basis in order to assist your particular line of research. Whether you are a scientist from industry or another research organisation, we welcome approaches to make use of our cleanrooms and we are keen to establish collaborations with other experimentalists.

The Optoelectronics Research Centre has a long history of research on fabrication of silica fibre including achieving world firsts such as the Erbium doped fibre amplifier and more recently key results within the fields of high power fibre lasers, Bragg gratings, etc. Much of the development work on the key fibre fabrication processes, such as MCVD, solution doping, and fibre drawing was done at Southampton University and we have been extremely successful in working with industry in this area, collaborating with over a dozen companies. These collaborations range from commercial supply of specialty fibre to extensive research contracts.

We work on all aspects of fibre fabrication from Materials Science and Chemistry, to achieve the desired fibre composition, to Physics and Engineering, to develop novel structures and fabrication techniques.

Examples of the fibre we develop are:

• Large mode area fibre for high power fibre lasers
• Double clad fibres
• High birefringence fibres
• Holey fibres
• Photosensitive fibres (for Bragg gratings)
• Novel dopant fibres for lasers and amplifiers
• Fibres for nonlinear application