Fluoride Glasses and Fiber for Mid-IR Applications

Fluoride glasses are among the few infrared materials that have been intensively investigated during the last three decades. In the last fifteen years, tremendous progress has been made in fluoride glass and fiber technology. The technology is now quite mature to provide high quality fibers for short and medium applications. The presentation will underline the latest progress made in fluoride glass fiber technology. Fluoride glasses have been discovered at Rennes University in the mid-seventies. They have been intensively investigated for the outstanding optical properties. In fact, they are transparent from the Ultraviolet up the mid-infrared, without any absorption peaks. Under fiber form, they have been investigated for their theoretical ultra-low loss, which is 0.001 dB/km, two orders of magnitude lower than silica.