Laboratories Fiber Grating and Sensor
Fiber Grating and Sensor Laboratory:
475 Benedum Hall
Fiber Bragg gratings and long-period gratings are key enabling technologies for fiber optical communication and sensoring. The Fiber Grating and Sensor Laboratory (FGS) is equipped with state-of-the-art facilities for writing fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and long-period grating (LPG). In the FGS laboratory, fiber gratings are written by a high-power Lumonics 248-nm KrF excimer laser. A flexible and motorized optical configuration enables the fabrication of long (>10 cm) Bragg gratings for dispersion compensation and fiber lasers. The FGS laboratory has a rich set of WDM phase masks covering the entire telecommunication window from 1530 nm to 1580 nm with 0.4 nm per grid for Bragg gratings. A high-pressure (>200 bars) hydrogen loading chamber is available to photosensitize standard fibers or waveguides.
Supporting equipment for the FGS laboratory includes an Ericisson fusion splicer (FSU995), optical spectrum analyzers, high-precision tunable lasers, optical multimeters, Er-doped ASE light sources, diode lasers (635 nm and 1550 nm), polarization controllers, an annealing oven, a CO2 laser for rapid thermal annealing, and a collection of fiber optic accessories (insulators, WDMs, circulators, and couplers etc). Through off-campus collaborations, members of the FGS laboratory also have excellent access to specialty fiber drawing facilities, 157-nm vacuum ultraviolet laser micromachining facilities for sub-micron laser micromachining, and a near-field scanning optical microscope.
