Deposition of electronic and plasmonic materials inside microstructured optical fibres

Abstract

Optical fibres are the transport medium of today's digital information. However, current telecommunications fibre systems require external solid state circuits to generate, amplify, receive, and manipulate the light. The fusion of the two technologies, namely fibre photonics and semiconductor electronics is expected to have a major impact on next generation of optoelectronic devices, exploiting both the guiding capabilities of optical fibres and the processing properties of semiconductors devices. Only recently, with the advent of microstructured optical fibres and templating material processing methods, it has been possible to create optical fibres with solid-state material inclusions. TEM, SEM and micro-Raman analysis was used to determine the structural characteristics of silicon and germanium modified microstructured optical fibres. These studies demonstrate that single crystal, poly-crystalline and amorphous semiconductors can be conformally deposited within the capillary voids of microstructured optical fibres. As a step towards fibre-integrated optoelectronic devices, it is demonstrated that in-fibre silicon and germanium wires and tubes can function as field effect transistors and light waveguides.

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Identifiers

ORCID for A.C. Peacock: orcid.org/0000-0002-1940-7172

ORCID for P.J.A. Sazio: orcid.org/0000-0002-6506-9266

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