Microstructured optical fibers embedded with semiconductors and metals: a potential route to fiberized metamaterials

Functional optoelectronic materials such as bulk crystalline semiconductors and plasmonic materials such as metals inside optical waveguides could lead to fiber devices with radically new electronic and photonic degrees of freedom. The growth of such materials inside microstructured optical fiber air-silica templates using our microfluidic ultrahigh pressure chemical fluid technique will be discussed, along with the performance of initial demonstrator devices and their putative metamaterials applications.