Delivery of high-power nanosecond and picosecond pulses through a hollow-core Negative Curvature Fibre for micro-machining applications

This paper reports the investigation of a novel type of hollow core microstructured fibre, the Negative Curvature Fibre (NCF), showing that it can deliver significantly larger pulse energies and shorter (ps) pulses (in comparison with other microstructured fibre designs) at 1064nm and 1030nm wavelengths, and demonstrate its application to micro-machining. This fibre was fabricated by the commonly used stack and draw technique. Eight circular capillaries were used to fabricate a preform, which was drawn down to produce a final fibre with a hollow core of 38.3μm diameter .