Dispersion compensation in optical transmission systems using high negative dispersion chalcogenide/silica hybrid microstructured optical fiber

In this paper, a new hybrid microstructured optical fiber (H-MOF) based upon photonic bandgap (PBG) light guiding mechanism which can be used for dispersion compensation in optical transmission systems is designed and simulated. The H-MOF core is made up of silica glass and the holes in the cladding network are filled with As₂Se₃ chalcogenide glass. By selecting an appropriate geometrical parameters for the structure, the dispersion and confinement losses of the proposed H-MOF at 1.55 µm are calculated to be ?6700 ps/nm/km and 6?×?10^?4 dB/m, respectively. Relative dispersion slope (RDS) of the H-MOF at 1.55 µm is about 0.00347 nm^?1. The proposed H-MOF is suitable for use in wavelength division multiplexing and dispersion compensating systems in optical fiber transmission networks.     

Optimized permeation and antifouling of PVDF hybrid ultrafiltration membranes: synergistic effect of dispersion and migration for fluorinated graphene oxide

Nanoparticles may have suffered from low modification efficiency in hybrid membranes due to embedding and aggregating in polymer matrix. In order to analyze the modification mechanisms of nanoparticle migration and dispersion on the properties of hybrid membranes, we designed different F/O ratios (R _F/O ) of fluorinated graphene oxide (FGO, diameter = 1.5 ~ 17.5 μm) by carbon tetrafluoride (CF₄) plasma treatment GO for 3, 5, 10, 15, and 20 min and successfully prepared novel PVDF hybrid membranes containing FGO via the phase inversion method. After a prolonged plasma treatment, the R _F/O of FGO was enhanced sharply, indicating an increasing compatibility of FGO with the matrix, especially FGO-20 (GO treated for 20 min). FGO contents in the top layer, sublayer, and the whole of membranes were probed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, energy-dispersive spectrometer, and indirect computation, respectively. In the top layer of membranes, FGO contents declined from 13.14 wt% (PVDF/GO) to 4.00 wt% (PVDF/FGO-10) and 1.96 wt% (PVDF/FGO-20) due to the reduced migration ability of FGO. It is worth mentioning that PVDF/FGO-10 membranes exhibited an excellent water flux and flux recovery rate (up to 406.90 L m^?2 h^?1 and 88.9%), which were improved by 67.3% and 14.6% and 52.5% and 24.0% compared with those of PVDF/GO and PVDF/FGO-20 membranes, respectively, although the dispersion and migration ability of FGO-10 was maintained at a moderate level. It indicated that the migration and dispersion of FGO in membranes could result in dynamic equilibrium, which played a key role in making the best use of nanomaterials to optimize membrane performance.     

Highly nonlinear dispersion-flattened square photonic crystal fibers with low confinement losses

A new simple structure of an index-guiding highly nonlinear dispersion-flattened square photonic crystal fiber (HNDFSPCF) with low confinement losses is proposed. The results reveal that it is possible to design five-rings HNDF-SPCFs with a flattened dispersion of 0.43 ps/(nm·km), low dispersion slope of -0:02 ps/(nm²·km), low confinement loss of approximately 10³ dB/m, and a large nonlinear coefficient of approximately 35W^-1 km^-1 at 1.55 μm. It is also observed that the confinement loss is less than 10^-1 dB/m in the wavelength range of 1.2 –1.7 μm.     

A broadband ultra flattened chromatic dispersion microstructured fiber for optical communications

A double-cladding microstructured fiber (MF) is proposed in this paper. The inner cladding of this optical fiber is composed of elliptical air holes and silica. The dependence of dispersion on the diameter of the air holes, the pitch, and the axes of the elliptical holes is investigated numerically. The proposed fiber possesses an ultra flattened dispersion curve over a wide wavelength range, and its dispersion value is small. The effective mode area is approaching to 60 μm², and the confinement loss is as low as <0.025 dB/km at 1550 nm. While choosing suitable structure parameters, an ultra dispersion-flattened MF within a broadband from1000 nm to 1900 nm can be achieved. The dispersion fluctuation is 0.6-1.0 ps/(nm·km) in all S, C and L band.     

A new design of low-loss and ultra-flat zero dispersion photonic crystal fiber using hollow ring defect

New hollow ring defect structure is introduced in photonic crystal fiber design for ultra- flat zero dispersion with very low waveguide losses. The hollow ring defect consisted of a central hole surrounded by a doped silica ring provides highly flexible defect engineering capabilities in photonic crystal fibers to achieve precise control of dispersion value and dispersion slope while independently maintaining low waveguide losses, which was not attainable in previous designs. A nearly flat zero dispersion of D=0±0.51 ps/nm km was obtained in the wavelength range of 1.44–1.61 μm with the maximum slope of ?2.7×10^?2 ps/nm² km. The confinement loss was less than 5.75×10^?8 dB/m along with the bending loss of 2.8×10^?6 dB/m for the radius of 10 mm, and splice loss of less than 1.57 dB to conventional single mode fiber at 1.55 μm.     

New nonlinear and dispersion flattened photonic crystal fiber with low confinement loss

A new nonlinear dispersion flattened photonic crystal fiber with low confinement loss is proposed. This fiber has threefold symmetry core. The doped region in the core and the big air-holes in the 1st ring can make high nonlinearity in the PCF. And the small air-holes in the 1st ring and the radial increasing diameters air-holes rings in cladding can be used to achieve the dispersion properties of the PCF. We can achieve the optimized optical properties by carefully selecting the PCFs structure parameters. A PCF with flattened dispersion is obtained. The dispersion is less than 0.8 ps/(nm km) and is larger than −0.7 ps/(nm km) from 1.515 μm to 1.622 μm. The nonlinear coefficient is about 12.6456 W⁻¹ km⁻¹, the fundamental mode area is about 10.2579 μm². The confinement loss is 0.30641 dB/km. This work may be useful for effective design and fabrication of dispersion flattened photonic crystal fibers with high nonlinearities.     

5 × 10 Gbps WDM-CAP-PON based on frequency comb using OFDM with blue LD

Presently, optical access networks are in great demand to meet the bandwidth requirement due to rapid growth in high speed applications for smart devices, cloud computing, big data analysis and other 5G applications. In this paper, 5?×?10 Gb/s wavelength division multiplexing carrier-less amplitude phase modulation-passive optical network (WDM-CAP-PON) with frequency comb is proposed and demonstrated. Also, 450 nm blue laser diode having bandwidth 0.8 GHz is used for visible light communication using 6 m FSO link to support cost effective high data rate optical network. The WDM-CAP-PON employing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing has been analysed in terms of tolerance to the fiber non-linearities through the effect of variations in launch power (??5 to 4 dBm), datarate (2.5–40 Gb/s) and distance (20–110 km) on Q-factor and error vector magnitude (EVM%) by considering pre-, post- and symmetrical-dispersion compensation schemes. It is reported that post-compensation is superior to pre- and symmetrical-compensation schemes to achieve the minimum 3.8?×?10^?3 BER under 7% forward error correction (FEC). The faithful transmission distance achieved for 10 Gb/s WDM-CAP-PON using post dispersion compensation scheme is 110 km.     

Mid-infrared fiber-coupled QCL-QEPAS sensor

An innovative spectroscopic system based on an external cavity quantum cascade laser (EC-QCL) coupled with a mid-infrared (mid-IR) fiber and quartz enhanced photoacoustic spectroscopy (QEPAS) is described. SF₆ has been selected as a target gas in demonstration of the system for trace gas sensing. Single mode laser delivery through the prongs of the quartz tuning fork has been obtained employing a hollow waveguide fiber with inner silver–silver iodine (Ag–AgI) coatings and internal core diameter of 300 μm. A detailed design and realization of the QCL fiber coupling and output collimator system allowed almost practically all (99.4 %) of the laser beam to be transmitted through the spectrophone module. The achieved sensitivity of the system is 50 parts per trillion in 1 s, corresponding to a record for QEPAS normalized noise-equivalent absorption of 2.7 × 10^?10 W cm^?1 Hz^?1/2.     

Achieving both high birefringence and low leakage loss in double-clad photonic crystal fibers

In this paper, a novel double-clad photonic crystal fiber (DC-PCF) is proposed for achieving both high birefringence and low leakage loss. According to numerical simulation of the proposed PCF, the extraordinarily high birefringence (over 2×10⁻²) and low leakage loss of the order of 0.0001 dB/km over a large wavelength range are achieved simultaneously. Single-polarization single-mode (SPSM) operation with low leakage loss is also discussed and can be realized and optimized in the PCF by adopting suitable structure parameters.     

One-pot green fabrication and antibacterial activity of thermally stable corn-like CNC/Ag nanocomposites

Corn-like cellulose nanocrystals/silver (CNC/Ag) nanocomposites were prepared by formic acid/hydrochloric acid hydrolysis of commercial microcrystalline cellulose (MCC), and redox reaction with silver ammonia aqueous solution (Ag(NH₃)₂(OH)) in one-pot green synthesis, in which the preparation and modification of CNCs were performed simultaneously and the resultant modified CNCs could be as reducing, stabilizing and supporting agents for silver nanoparticles. The influences of the Ag⁺ ion concentrations on the morphology, microstructure, and properties of the CNC/Ag nanocomposites were investigated. It is found that corn-like CNC/Ag nanocomposites containing Ag nanoparticles with diameter of about 20–40 nm were obtained. Compared to the MCCs, high crystallinity of 88.5 % and the maximum degradation temperature (T _max) of 364.5 °C can be achieved. Moreover, the CNC/Ag nanocomposites showed strong antibacterial activity against both Gram-negative Escherichia coli and Gram-positive Staphylococcus aureus. Furthermore, such nanocomposites can act as bifunctional nanofillers to improve thermal stability, mechanical property, and antibacterial activity of commercial poly(3-hydroxybutyrate-co-3-hydroxyvalerate) and poly(lactic acid).     

Design of offset core photonic crystal fiber filter based on surface plasmon resonance

The novel offset core photonic crystal fiber filter is designed and analyzed, whose dispersion relations and polarization characteristics are simulated by finite element method using COMSOL Multiphysics software. The filter structure is optimized by changing diameter of air holes and the thickness of Au layer. Simulation results show that loss of y-polarized mode reaches 657 dB/cm while the loss of x-polarized mode is very low at the communication window (\(1.55\,\upmu \hbox {m}\)). The crosstalk of filter reaches 56.2 dB at \(1.55\,\upmu \hbox {m}\) wavelength and the 20 dB band width of the filter is 100 nm when the propagation distance is \(1\,\upmu \hbox {m}\). Not only the filter shows good performance but also the proposed photonic crystal fiber can be applied to other fields.     

Numerical analysis of hollow core photonic band gap fibers with modified honeycomb lattice

An accurate analysis of the air-guiding in hollow core photonic bandgap fibers with a modified honeycomb air-hole lattice has been carried out. The influence of the hollow core dimension, as well as of the cladding geometric parameters on the confinement loss, the nonlinear coefficient and the single-mode behaviour of the fibers has been investigated through a full-vector modal solver based on the finite element method. Simulation results have shown that confinement loss lower than 0.1 dB/km, a nonlinear parameter lower than 0.01 (W · km)^?1 and an effectively single-mode behaviour over a wavelength range of about 150 nm can be achieved with eight air-hole ring modified honeycomb fibers.     

Dispersion and Confinement Loss Control in Modified Hexagonal Photonic Crystal Fibers

This paper presents a novel technique for the control of chromatic dispersion and confinement loss in hexagonal photonic crystal fibers (H-PCFs). It is demonstrated that it is possible to obtain very low chromatic dispersion of 0 ± 0:38 ps/(nm·km) in the wavelength range of 1.41 to 1.66 μm and confinement loss of less than 0.0001 dB/km from a six ring modified H-PCF (MH-PCF). The higher order dispersion at 1.55 μm is about −0.001 ps/(nm²-km).     

Transmission system over 3000 km with dispersion compensated by chirped fiber Bragg gratings

The limitation of the system with dispersion compensation by chirped fiber Bragg gratings is investigated in this paper. The transmission distance of the system based on chirped fiber Bragg gratings surpasses 3000 km. The bit error rate (BER) of the system is below 10⁻⁹ for as long as 2000 km. The BER is about 10⁻⁷ at 3000 km and, when forward error correction (FEC) is added, zero BER can be achieved. It is the longest transmission system with dispersion compensation by chirped fiber Bragg gratings.     

Cerium oxide nanoparticles protect primary mouse bone marrow stromal cells from apoptosis induced by oxidative stress

The sintering of a silver (Ag) nanoparticle film by laser beam irradiation was studied using a CW DPSS laser. The laser sintering of the Ag nanoparticle thin film gave a transparent conductive film with a thickness of ca. 10 nm, whereas a thin film sintered by conventional heat treatment using an electronic furnace was an insulator because of the formation of isolated silver grains during the slow heating process. The laser sintering of the Ag nanoparticle thin film gave a unique conductive network structure due to the rapid heating and quenching process caused by laser beam scanning. The influences of the laser sintering conditions such as laser scan speed on the conductivity and the transparency were studied. With the increase of scan speed from 0.50 to 5.00 mm/s, the surface resistivity remarkably decreased from 4.45 × 10⁸ to 6.30 Ω/sq. The addition of copper (Cu) nanoparticles to silver thin film was also studied to improve the homogeneity of the film and the conductivity due to the interaction between the oxidized surface of Cu nanoparticle and a glass substrate. By adding 5 wt% Cu nanoparticles to the Ag thin film, the surface resistivity improved to 2.40 Ω/sq.     

Spectroscopic study of oscillator strength and radiative decay time of colloidal CdSe quantum dots

Characterization of samples of cadmium selenide quantum dots (CdSe) QDs dissolved in toluene colloidal solutions at a concentration of 1.4 mg/ml was carried out through UV–Vis absorption and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The size-dependent absorption and red-shifted PL emission peak wavelengths could be tuned between 510–576 and 545–606 nm respectively. Optical absorption spectral measurements yielded CdSe QDs having diameters about ~ 2.44–3.69 nm with energy gaps 2.32–2.08 eV which are higher than the bulk CdSe (1.74 eV) reminiscent of quantum confinement. This is found to be in good agreement with the semi-empirical pseudopotential model. In addition, the first excitonic absorption transition 1S_(e)1S_3/2(h) oscillator strength and the corresponding fluorescence radiative decay time of CdSe QDs are assessed using relevant Einstein relations for absorption and emission in a two-level system. The elaborated calculations would anticipate that the transition oscillator scale with the CdSe QD radius as ~ R^2.54. Correspondingly, the calculated radiative decay times decrease from 56.4 to 23.2 ns which scale with CdSe QDs radius as ~ R^?2.155 in fairly good agreement with experimental values reported in the literature.     

Design and fabrication of Gires�CTournois interferometers for?Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber laser system

A Gires?CTournois interferometer (GTI) with large dispersion compensation was designed and fabricated according to the requirement of the Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber laser system. The designed GTI can provide an average group delay dispersion (GDD) of ?1500 fs² and a high reflectance (>99.7%) from 1030 to 1050 nm. The Ion-assisted Deposition (IAD) technique was utilized to manufacture the mirror. Good agreement between the measured and designed results both for reflectance and GDD was achieved. The reflectance during 1030?C1050 nm was above 99.5% and the GDD ripple was less than ±300 fs². The GTI was used both in the intracavity dispersion compensation and extracavity pulse compression for the Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber laser system. A mode-locked soliton pulse with a 506-fs duration was recorded. An extracavity pulse compression test showed that the GTI had identical pulse compression capability as the conventional grating pairs while the energy loss was obviously reduced. Our results demonstrated that the HDM, which was able to provide quite a large amount of negative dispersion (???8×10⁴ fs²), could be an ideal alternative to replace the dispersive compensating grating pairs for the dispersion compensation of the Yb-doped photonic crystal fiber laser system.     

Novel large negative dispersion and tunable zero dispersion wavelength of photonic crystal fiber

The article describes a novel doped CS₂ core photonic crystal fiber with high negative chromatic dispersion. The proposed design is simulated through a full-vector finite element method and anisotropic perfectly matched layers. The numerical results show that we can achieve a negative dispersion coefficient of ?5600 ps/(nm km) almost at the wavelength of 1.55 μm by carefully adjusting the proposed PCF structure parameters. The proposed PCF may have great potential applications in dispersion compensating, optical parametric amplification, and optical fiber communication.     

Controlling SERS intensity by tuning the size and height of a silver nanoparticle array

It is demonstrated that the surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) intensity of R6G molecules adsorbed on a Ag nanoparticle array can be controlled by tuning the size and height of the nanoparticles. A firm Ag nanoparticle array was fabricated on glass substrate by using nanosphere lithography (NSL) combined with reactive ion etching (RIE). Different sizes of Ag nanoparticles were fabricated with seed polystyrene nanospheres ranging from 430 nm to 820 nm in diameter. By depositing different thicknesses of Ag film and lifting off nanospheres from the surface of the substrate, the height of the Ag nanoparticles can be tuned. It is observed that the SERS enhancement factor will increase when the size of the Ag nanoparticles decreases and the deposition thickness of the Ag film increases. An enhancement factor as high as 2×10⁶ can be achieved when the size of the polystyrene nanospheres is 430 nm in diameter and the height of the Ag nanoparticles is 96 nm. By using a confocal Raman mapping technique, we also demonstrate that the intensity of Raman scattering is enhanced due to the local surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) occurring in the Ag nanoparticle array.     

Ag‐nanoparticle‐modified single Ag nanowire for detection of melamine by surface‐enhanced Raman spectroscopy

Silver nanowires synthesized by a solvothermal method were used as templates for fabricating silver‐nanoparticle‐decorated silver (AgNP/Ag) nanowires. The number density and particle size of Ag nanoparticles can be controlled by varying the concentration of Ag precursor. Single AgNP/Ag nanowire exhibited strong surface‐enhanced Raman scattering effect. Detection of melamine molecules at concentrations as low as 1.0 × 10⁻⁸ M was used as an example to show the possible applications of such AgNP/Ag nanowires. Their application in rapid detection of melamine in milk solution was further demonstrated. It was shown that melamine in milk solution at a low concentration of 5.0 × 10⁻⁸ M can be easily detected with little sample pretreatment. The results demonstrate the potential of single AgNP/Ag nanowire as a surface‐enhanced Raman scattering substrate for convenient and sensitive detection of trace amounts of melamine in a complex mixture. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.