Freeform Silica Fibre Optics via Ultrafast Laser Manufacturing

At a glance: Microstructured optical fibres are transforming science and technology in fields spanning telecommunications through to healthcare. Their unique offering of guiding properties continues to push the limits of established photonics and drive novel innovation and scientific discovery. However, a limit to this potential is approaching because many theoretically transformative fibres cannot be realised in practice due to manufacturing challenges. With this fellowship, I aim to unlock this unmet potential by developing a freeform optical fibre manufacturing process, which is unbound from conventional manufacturing constraints.


The vast majority of optical fibre is produced for the telecommunications sector to satisfy exponentially rising data capacity needs. The type of fibre used in telecoms is typically conventional step-index fibre, comprised of a silica glass core surrounded by a lower-index doped-silica cladding. Solid fibre is inexpensive and guides with reasonably low-loss, but is fundamentally limited in performance by material absorption, scattering and high-dispersion amongst other factors.

Over the past few decades, another type of optical fibre has emerged - microstructured optical fibre (MOF). MOF utilises a structured-material core-cladding in which light is guided through complex waveguiding mechanisms. Depending on the type, MOF can offer several advantages over conventional fibre including broad spectral transmission, low bend-loss, low latency and high-power delivery. Remarkably, certain MOFs guide light within a hollow region of the fibre. These so-called hollow-core fibres overcome problems faced by solid-core fibres such as material absorption, dispersion, optical damage and latency, as well as enabling an innovation-rich field of gas-filled sensors and light sources.

MOF is manufactured by an approach known as stack-and-draw. Stack-and-draw is a two-step process: firstly, circular glass capillaries, rods and tubes are stacked laterally, often with added spacers, to form a scaled-up approximation of the fibre known as a preform. Secondly, the preform is drawn to fibre through a high-temperature furnace. The design of MOF developed so far has been heavily steered by the restrictive stacking process, e.g., hexagonally-packed Kagomé fibre and circle-tubular antiresonant fibre. Unfortunately, several types of MOF that have shown huge potential theoretically cannot be reasonably stacked, and so the vast applicability of MOF is beginning to plateau.

To unlock this potential, we will develop a new preform manufacturing process capable of producing freeform fibre, i.e., fibre with arbitrarily structured cross-section, without compromising on fibre quality. In the proposed approach, short segments of the preform are precisely and arbitrarily machined using tailored laser-manufacturing methods. These segments are then bonded axially to form the preform which is drawn to fibre using traditional methods. Building upon a recent early feasibility demonstration, the fellowship will facilitate an overhaul of the laser-based approach to fabricating preforms and investigation of optimal glass bonding techniques. Amongst a trove of benefits, freeform fibre will bring drastically lower loss, increased stability, faster data transfer speeds and novel spectral guidance.

The later stages of the fellowship will focus on developing fibre with unprecedented guiding performance and exploring applications of fibre with novel geometry. We aim to develop an industry-ready manufacturing method for freeform silica optical fibre, and further improve high-resolution glass macro-fabrication and advanced bonding and assembly capabilities. This work is expected to open up a new field of fibre optics research and nurture a team of dedicated researchers.