WHITE-LIGHT SOURCES: Sapphire-core fiber produces broadband UV-visible light for OCT

摘要

A team of Taiwanese researchers has developed a very broadband (near-UV through the visible region) optical-fiber-based light source for uses in the bioscience and medical fields. Based on a glass-clad crystalline-sapphire fiber pumped by a near-UV laser, the source is potentially useful for optical coherence tomography (OCT), as well as fluorescence microscopy and flow cytometry. The group, which includes researchers from National Dong Hwa University (Hualien), National Taiwan University (Taipei), and National Sun Yat-Sen University (Kaohsiung) demonstrated a fiber with a 1.16 mW optical output power (when pumped by a 325-nm-emitting helium-cadmium laser) at a 4.7% optical-to-optical efficiency and a white-light output with CIR chromaticity coordinates of (0.287, 0.333), which is a slightly blue-green shade of white.