Investigation of passive and active silica-tin oxide nanostructured optical fibers fabricated by inverse dip-coating and powder in tube method based on the chemical sol-gel process and laser emission

This paper presents a study of original nanostructured optical fibers based on the SiO2-SnO2-(Yb3+) system. Two different processes have been developed and compared: the sol-gel chemical method associated to the "inverse dipcoating" (IDC) and the "powder in tube" (PIT). The microstructural and optical properties of the fibers are studied according to the concentration of SnO2. X-Ray Diffraction as well as Transmission Electron Microscopy studies show that the SnO2 crystallizes into the cassiterite phase as nanoparticles with a diameter ranging from 4 to 50 nm as a function of tin oxide concentration. A comparative study highlights a better conservation of SnO2 into the fiber core with the PIT approach according to the refractive index profile and energy dispersive X-Ray spectrometry measurement. The attenuation evaluated by the classic cut-back method gives respectively values higher than 3 dB/m and 0.2 dB/m in the visible (VIS) and infrared (IR) ranges for the PIT fibers whereas background losses reach 0.5 dB/m in the VIS range for IDC fibers. The introduction of ytterbium ions into the core of PIT fibers, directly in the first chemical step, leads to a laser emission (between 1050 and 1100 nm) according to the fiber length under 850 nm wavelength pumping. Luminescence studies have demonstrated the influence of the tin oxide on the rare earth optical properties especially by the modification of the absorption (850 to 1000 nm) and emission (950 to 1100 nm) by discretization of the bands, as well as on the IR emission lifetime evaluated to 10 mu s.