Fabrication and heat treatment effects on absorption characteristics of glass fibers doped with PbTe semiconductor quantum dots

PbTe doped glass fibers for nonlinear optical application were developed using a modified solution doping method in the MCVD process. An absorption peak near 1050 nm was observed and which was attributed to optical resonance due to PbTe quantum dots precipitated in the core of the fiber. The effect of heat treatment on the absorption peak position and absorption intensity was also investigated.

1. Introduction

Recently, much efforts have been made to develop nonlinear optical glasses for application to all-optical devices. Semiconductor doped glass (SDG) is of interest because of it's nonlinear optical properties due to quantum confinement effect by nano-sized semiconductor quantum dots (SQD) distributed in glass matrix [1]. Most of SDGs are fabricated as a bulk type by melt and quenching process and a film type by sputtering or sol-gel process. Nonlinear optical fibers with nonoxide glass compositions have also been developed, but those glasses suffer from unstable mechanical properties and incompatibility with silica glass fibers.