Fibres and Photonics Materials

Developing new techniques to fabricate a wide range of novel glasses, structured glass preforms via extrusion, passive, active, doped and structured soft and silica fibres. Underpinning sensing, non-linear, laser and light sources in the mid-IR and beyond.

microstructured fibre illuminated by yellow light

  • Overview

    IPAS has complete vertical integration of expertise and facilities, from modelling to device fabrication.
    Key areas of strength include:

    • Tellurite and fluoride glasses (both passive and active)
    • Advanced preform technologies (extrusion and drilling based)
    • Development of glasses and fibres capable of transmitting light in the mid-infrared that underpin new sensing platforms and lasers
    • Custom silica fibres for fibre lasers, including air-clad rare-earth doped fibres
    • Suspended and exposed core silica fibres for sensing

  • Modelling
    • A suite of analytical, numerical and finite-element modelling tools to predict the optical properties of waveguides and fibres with complex structures
    • New theoretic frameworks to explore waveguides and fibres with extreme properties and nanoscale features
    • A pulse propagation model to predict how a pulse propagates along a fibre
    • Waveguide and fibre design based on reversed engineering techniques
    • A suite of numerical and finite-element modelling tools to find resonance modes of microsphere and microdisk cavities

  • Fabrication of glasses and fibres
    • Controlled atmosphere glass batching, melting and annealing
    • Soft and hard glass preform extrusion
    • Soft and hard glass preform ultrasonic milling
    • Soft glass and silica fibre drawing

  • Characterisation
    • High-resolution electron and atomic force/scanning near-field optical microscopes (AFM/SNOM)
    • Transmission spectrometers and ellipsometers spanning from the ultraviolet to the far-infrared spectral region (200 nm-30 μm)
    • Optical profiler to measure surface roughness
    • Simultaneous thermal analysis (STA/TGA/DSC)
    • Fibre loss measurement

  • Research

    Our research ranges from fundamental science to application-driven design and development, including:

    • Development of glasses with enhanced infrared transmission and optical nonlinearity
    • Nanophotonic glasses created by embedding nanocrystals in glass
    • Advanced technologies for processing and shaping glass
    • Design and fabrication of micro and nanostructured soft glass and silica optical fibres
    • Development of speciality doped, active and passive silica fibres, including single-mode germano-silica, rare-earth doped silica and double/triple clad fibres
    • Advanced light propagation theory within optical fibres and planar waveguides

Key contact

Prof Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem
Institute for Photonics and Advanced Sensing (IPAS)  
The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005  
Telephone:  +61 (0)8 831 31136
Email: heike.ebendorff@adelaide.edu.au