Optical Fibre Nanowires and Related Devices

The Optical Fibre Nanowires and Related Devices Group, led by Dr. Gilberto Brambilla, is interested in the exploitation of devices based on optical fibre nanowires.

Optical nanowires are of interest for a range of emerging fibre optic applications since they offer a number of enabling optical and mechanical properties:

• Large evanescent fields
  A considerable fraction of the transmitted power can propagate outside the nanowire physical boundary
• High nonlinearity
  Light can be confined to a very small area over long device lengths allowing the straightforward observation of nonlinear interactions at relatively modest power levels
• Strong confinement and flexibility
  Because of the small size, nanowires can easily be bent and manipulated. Bend
  radii of the order of a few microns can be readily achieved with relatively low induced bend optical loss allowing for highly compact devices with a complex geometry
• Low-loss interconnection to other optical fibres and fiberised components
  Optical nanowires preserve the original optical fibre dimensions at their input and output allowing easy interconnection to optical fibre components.

Nanowire

• Fabrication of silica optical fibre nanowires
• Manufacture of compound glass optical fibre nanowires
• High-Q microcoil resonators
• Ultra-high-Q multicoil resonators
• Minimization of optical losses
• Sub-wavelength confinement
• Optical handling of microparticles
• Supercontinuum generation
• Nanowire handling
• Sensing

The fabrication and applications of fibre nanowires and related devices

This EPSRC project is meant to explore the manufacture and exploitation of optical fibre nanowires. The broad aim of this project is to develop nanowire technology and to begin to investigate the use of this know-how in a number of key application areas. Specific targets include:

1. the investigation of the limits in terms of minimum nanowire loss and length for silica nanowires produced using the flame brush technique
2. the development of the technology to manipulate, handle and preserve nanowire devices
3. the study, design and manufacture of devices for applications in telecommunication, optics and sensing in biology/chemistry.

This project, amongst others, should lead to new techniques to:

• manipulate and detect living cells
• find novel ways to connect fibres, waveguides and optical circuits with low loss, high-finesse filters and dispersive elements
• new optical sources for defence, medical, display and aerospace applications

Our main partner groups within the ORC are:

• Advanced Fibre Technologies and Applications
• Computational Nonlinear Optics
• Physical Optics
• Optical Biosensors and Biophotonics
• Integrated Optics and Microstructures
• FAST lab

External collaborations include

• Politecnico di Torino, Turin (Italy)
• Cristal Growth Centre, Anna University, Chennai (India)
• University of Luoyang, Luoyang (China)
• University College of Cork (Ireland)
• Universita’ di Milano Bicocca, Milan (Italy)

F. Xu, P. Horak, G. Brambilla, Conical and biconical ultra-high-Q optical-fiber nanowire microcoil resonator, Applied Optics 2007 Vol.46(4) pp.570-573

G. Brambilla, F. Xu, X. Feng, Fabrication of optical fibre nanowires and their optical and mechanical characterisation, Electronics Letters 2006 Vol.42(9) pp.517-519

F. Xu, P. Horak, G. Brambilla, Conical and bi-conical high-Q optical nanofiber microcoil resonator, Proc. of SPIE 2006 pp.6351-101

G. Brambilla, F. Xu, D.J. Richardson, Adiabatic SNOM tips for optical tweezers, 5th International Conference on Optics-Photonics Design & Fabrication (ODF '06) Nara 6-8 Dec 2006

F. Xu, P. Horak, G. Brambilla, Conical and bi-conical ultra-high-Q optical-fibre-nanowire microcoil resonator, APOC 2006 Gwangju Korea 3-7 Sep 2006

G. Brambilla, X. Feng, D.J. Richardson, Lead-silicate optical nanowires, CLEO/Europe 2005 Munich 12-17 Jun 2005

G. Brambilla, F. Koizumi, X. Feng, D.J. Richardson, Compound-glass optical nanowires, Electronics Letters 2005 Vol.41(7) pp.400-1

G. Brambilla, V. Finazzi, D.J. Richardson, Ultra-low-loss optical fiber nanotapers, Optics Express 2004 Vol.12(10) pp.2258-63

19 July 2007 - Optical sensor detects one molecule in 10 million more...

4 July 2007 - Dr Gilberto Brambilla receives prestigious Royal Society Fellowship more...