Feb 25 2008
A speciality fibre production facility at the Institut für Strahlwerkzeuge (IFSW) at the Universität Stuttgart will enable the development of new optical fiber structures with superior properties for the generation and the transport of high brilliance laser radiation. The facility consists of a MCVD-preform production (which is still under construction) and a commercial drawing tower, which is operational since a few days. For this – at least for German universities – quite unique facility, the IFSW, which is headed by Prof. Thomas Graf, received a total funding of 1.825 Million Euro, partly from the state of Baden-Württemberg, partly from national funding organizations.
Several prominent guests from politics, economy, science and funding organizations will join the dedication ceremony, which will be performed on Monday, the 3rd of March at 4:00 o’clock pm. The ceremony will include a live demonstration of the drawing tower. Representatives of the press are cordially invited to join this celebration; please contact [email protected] if you are interested.
For several commercially available solid-state laser sources – operating pulsed as well as cw – no delivery fibres with adequate power handling capabilities are available in the moment. This problem will become more severe soon due to the continuous improvements in power as well as in focusability of the sources. Therefore, an urgent demand exists to develop flexible fiber structures with improved power handling capabilities, especially for single transverse mode applications, that are sufficiently robust and easy to handle for industrial environments. At the same time, there is still much room for improvements in the field of active fibres.
Typically, the base material for the fibre production is synthetic fused silica, which can be produced with excellent purity and controllable composition by the Modified Chemical Vapor Deposition (MCVD) process. In this process, a gas mixture inside a fused silica tube is heated to about 1800 °C, where it converts into glass particles, which are deposited partly at the walls of the tube. The drawing of the fibers is done with the help of a nearly 10 m high drawing tower, where the glass preform is heated to about 2000 °C. During the drawing process, the shape of the structures in the preform essentially remains unchanged. Immediately after the drawing process, the fibre is coated to prevent it from damage due to scratches and humidity.
The new facility at the IFSW will help to exploit the full potential of several existing and future laser sources with high power and high brightness in a broad range of applications. This new field of competence will complement the institute’s 20+ years of experience in high power laser development and optics for high power beam delivery.