VAD technology for laser fibers

VAD technology has been proposed for laser fiber fabrication to improve its productivity and reproducibility. Rare-earth ion, Yb 3+ has been incorporated with Ce 3+ and Al 3+ by the conventional solution doping process. In order to obtain a transparent Yb-doped core rod, the pre-sintering and consolidation process for the large volume of silica soot deposited by VAD has been significantly investigated. In addition, 20/400μm Yb-doped fiber with octagonal cladding has been fabricated. The cladding absorption was 0.44dB/m at 915nm, which corresponds to ~ 0.2mol% of Yb concentration and the slope efficiency with respect to absorbed pump power at 976nm was 66.7%.