Diffusion Processes in Lightguide Materials

摘要

Diffusion processes in high silica glasses play a very important role in the diverse methods and steps of the manufacture and modification of optical fibers and planar waveguides. For example, they must be taken into account in order to realize defined refractive index profiles (especially for the very small core radii of amplifier fibers or dispersion compensators), and for the increasing of the photosensitivity of waveguides by hydrogen treatment at high pressures or high temperatures. Many steps of the preparation processes are closely related to diffusion phenomena such as the loss of dopants by vaporization in MCVD deposition and collapse procedures, the removal of impurities by chlorine treatment, the incorporation of non-volatile compounds via solution doping into the small silica particles and others.