A Novel Method for the Fabrication of Photonic Crystal Fiber

This paper describes a novel method of fabrication for glass photonic crystal fibres (GPCF) with die-cast process. The die is made of the heat-resisting alloy steel, whose inner structure matches the GPCF´s structure, and the SF6 glass is used as the material of GPCF. The die is vertically put in the vessel with SF6 glass, and the vacuum hose is attached to the top of the die, then put them in the furnace to heat at 870 K together. The die is slowly filled with the softening glass under vacuum condition till it is full. Keep it in the furnace to anneal at a rate of 20 K/h to remove thermal stress that could lead to cracks. The outer tube of the die is taken apart after its temperature is close to room temperature, and the fused glass bundle is etched in an acidic solution to remove the heat-resisting alloy steel rods, and the etched bundle is ready for use as a GPCF preform. The preform is thinned to a fibre. The GPCF is observed the generation of supercontinuum, with the flat plateau in the spectrum of output emission stretching from 400 to 1400 nm by experimental measurement. The transmission loss is 0.2-0.3 dB/m at the wavelength of 420-900 nm