High contrast glasses for all-solid fibers fabrication

Abstract We present composition development of borosilicate glasses for fabrication of high refractive index contrast, all-solid photonic crystal fibers. An oxide system composed of SiO 2 B 2 O 3 Al 2 O 3 Li 2 O Na 2 O K 2 O was adjusted to match thermal properties of selected highly nonlinear, lead bismuth gallium silicate glass. A high difference of refractive index of 0.376 is achieved at a wavelength of 1550 nm. We proved experimentally that the developed pair of glasses enables to draw optical fibers, and we propose a design of a photonic crystal fiber structure for broadband supercontinuum generation.