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Construction of a dual-core hollow waveguide for visible and mid-infrared light transmission based on PTFE tubing and UV gel

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Abstract

This work proposes a facile approach to fabricate a dual-core hollow waveguide based on two common and low-cost raw materials, namely polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tube and ultraviolet (UV) gel. A silica glass tube is nested inside a heat-shrinkable PTFE tube. After heat treatment at 350 °C, the PTFE tube shrinks and then transforms into the low-index polymer on the outside of the silica tube. The PTFE-coated silica glass tubing is filled with UV gel followed by inserting a typical Ag/AgI mid-infrared (IR) hollow optical fiber. The UV gel is cured by UV radiation, forming a solid low-index layer between the PTFE-coated silica glass tubing and the Ag/AgI hollow optical fiber. A visible laser beam can be transmitted at a loss of 0.4 dB/m through the silica annulus between the low-index PTFE and UV gel layer. A 10.6-μm-wavelength CO2 laser beam is delivered through the Ag/AgI hollow optical fiber (core size 530 μm) and the transmission loss goes up from 1.63 to 3.22 dB/m as the bending angle increases from 0° to 90°.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 61775060, 61275100, 61761136006 and 61790583).

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Author notes

  1. Shuoying Yu and Zihan Sun have contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Research Center for Nanophotonics and Advanced Instrument of Ministry of Education, Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices (Ministry of Education), Department of Materials, School of Physics and Electronic Science, East China Normal University, 500 Dongchuan Road, Shanghai, 200241, China

    Shuoying Yu, Zihan Sun, Guishun Li, Guoxing Xie, Yang Shen, Sheng Liu, Xuehui Lu, Shaohua Liu, Chengbin Jing, Ya Cheng & Junhao Chu

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  1. Shuoying Yu
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  2. Zihan Sun
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  3. Guishun Li
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  4. Guoxing Xie
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  5. Yang Shen
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  6. Sheng Liu
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  7. Xuehui Lu
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  8. Shaohua Liu
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  9. Chengbin Jing
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  10. Ya Cheng
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  11. Junhao Chu
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Correspondence to Chengbin Jing.

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Yu, S., Sun, Z., Li, G. et al. Construction of a dual-core hollow waveguide for visible and mid-infrared light transmission based on PTFE tubing and UV gel. Opt Quant Electron 53, 214 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11082-021-02893-0

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