Research within the CoEP

Fibres | Lasers | Nonlinear optics| Fabrication | Sensing

The CoEP is involved in cutting-edge research and is at the forefront of photonics research. The research covers various areas of optics and photonics with the focus being mainly divided into novel fibres, novel lasers, nonlinear optics in fibres, fabrication research and fibre sensing.

For more detailed information into these areas please follow the links at the top of this page.

Transmission Fibres

Terahertz waveguides

Shaghik Atakaramians from the COEP conducts research into Terahertz (Thz) waveguides with sub-wavelength features, THz microwires and porous fibres, to achieve low loss and low dispersion guiding structures. The research also focuses on the application of these waveguides as THz biosensors.

Her theoretical modeling shows that porous fibers have better confinement, lower loss and dispersion compared to THz microwires. These porous fibres are novel THz waveguides and can also be manipulated to achieve high birefringence. They are a potential substitute for free space guidance at THz frequencies.

This is a joint project under the supervision of Prof Tanya Monro and Dr Shahraam Afshar V from the COEP and Prof Derek Abbott, and Dr Bernd Fischer from Centre for Biomedical Engineering at the University of Adelaide.

Novel Lasers

The COEP is involved in a number of fibre laser projects, including research into Thulmium lasers emitting at 1.9μm, Holmium lasers emitting at 2.1μm and Erbium doped fibre lasers emitting at around 2.7μm.

Erbium doped fibre laser development at 2.7μm

With an emission wavelength beyond the transmission of silica, new tellurite materials have been fabricated with transmission out to 4 - 5μm. The fabrication of low loss tellurite glass has allowed the spectroscopic characterisation of Erbium in these glasses. The in-house made tellurite glass has been extruded and pulled into large mode area Erbium doped microstructured fibres for use as the gain medium in these lasers.

This project forms the basis of Micheal Oermann's PhD research.

Nonlinear optics in fibres

Mid infrared supercontinuum generation

The focus of this research is building towards a collaboration with DSTO on mid-IR supercontinuum generation.  The plan is to build supercontinuum sources, based on our highly nonlinear fibres, that span approximately 2-5 microns. 

This project involves Dr Richard White, Dr Shahraam Afshar, Dr  David Lancaster, Wenqi Zhang, Keiron Boyd from the CoEP and John Haub from DSTO.

Supercontinuum generation in tapered soft glass microstructured fibers (MOF)

This project aims to use supercontinuum generation for pump probe spectroscopy using soft glass MOFs. By modifying the core size of the fiber optic along its length through tapering, the zero dispersion wavelength is also altered along the fiber, allowing for more efficient supercontinuum generation.

This project is the basis of Keiron Boyd's PhD research

Fabrication research

One area of research at the Centre aims to advance the science and technology of glass, preform and fibre fabrication and fibre postprocessing.

Glass fabrication

We have established open air and cutting-edge controlled atmosphere glass melting facilities to fabricate tellurite and fluoride glasses. Both glasses demonstrate high transparency in the mid-infrared, a spectral region of rapidly growing interest for laser and sensing applications. Our research aims to develop new glass compositions with targeted properties and to develop the fabrication procedure for these glasses to produce large billets (up to 300g) of excellent optical quality for the microstructured fibre fabrication

Preform fabrication

We have established a cutting-edge extrusion machine with excellent control of extrusion speed, force and temperature. Our research on preform fabrication aims to advance the extrusion technique for the fabrication of structured preforms with ever increasing complexity and using new glasses (commercial and in-house fabricated glasses). This research includes better understanding of the flow of glass through extrusion dies made of different materials.

Microstructured fibre fabrication

We have established a soft glass drawing tower with precise control of positive and negative pressure within the preform and excellent control of the fibre diameter. Our fibre fabrication research aims to constantly advance the fibre drawing conditions and our understanding of glass flow during fibre drawing to produce microstructured fibres with enhanced complexity and ever smaller feature size from established and new soft glasses.

Fibre postprocessing

We have established facilities for the etching and filling of fibres with liquids. Our research in this area aims to alter the fibre structure and to enhance the functionality of our fibres.

Light-matter interactions and fibre sensing

Chemical | Biological

Chemical Sensing

Corrosion Sensing

In collaboration with the Defence Science and Technology Organisation (DSTO) the centre is currently working on a project to develop microstructured optical fibre based corrosion sensors. This work involves the fabrication of novel exposed-core microstructured optical fibres, which will allow for highly-sensitive distributive sensing. The project goal is to then coat the fibre with molecules that form fluorescent complexes with aluminium, allowing corrosion of aluminium alloys to be optically monitored.

Biological Sensing

The COEP in involved in a number of projects relating to optical biosensing using microstructured optical fibres. The research is aimed towards the specific detection of pathogen viruses (such as the bird flu virus H5N1 and HIV) or any other biomolecules (such as antigens, proteins, bacteria).

Flouresence Capture

One project deals with the capture of the fluorescence emission of a labeled antibody located inside a microstructured optical fibre in a typical sandwich assay. Currently, the main axis of research is related to the functionalization process used to attach the active coating inside the fibre and especially the influence of this first internally deposited layer on the optical properties of the fibre such as the optical loss, fluorescence capture and therefore the sensor sensitivity.

Dr Alexandre Francois is involved as a postdoctoral researcher in this project.

Surface Plasmon Resonance in Sensing

Another project aims to build a label free optical biosensor using Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) as the transducing mechanism. In this scheme the first challenge is to coat the core of a wagon wheel fibre with a metal (either gold or silver) suitable for the generation of SPR using electroless plating.

This project involves Jonathan Boehm as an honours student and Dr Alexandre Francois.

Label Free Biosensors

The centre is also working on a project to develop another label free biosensor using Whispering Gallery Modes (WGM) hosted in a capillary, typically used for capillary electrophoresis. Whispering Gallery Modes are optical modes that are produced by confining light by total internal reflection into a resonator which has at least one axis of revolution, a capillary for this particular project. In this context, the confined light travels within the resonator along its circumference and the spectral position of the resonant frequencies are depending on the optical properties and the geometry of the resonator. Therefore, any modification of the resonator such as the absorption of a (biological) molecule onto its surface produces a shift of the resonant frequencies. This transducing mechanism provides a versatile tool for label free biosensing, which has already proven single molecule detection capability.

This project involves collaboration with Dr. Peter Hoffman from the Proteomic center at the University of Adelaide. Dr Alexandre Francois is also involved in this project in a postdoctoral capacity.