Simulation and fabrication of micro-structured optical fibers with extruded tubes

Chalcogenide glass is fragile and devitrifiable to be fabricated into micro-structured optical fibers (MOFs). In this article, MOFs which have jacket tubes with inner hexagon are designed and fabricated. The optical properties, such as effective refractive index, electric field intensity, effective mode area, nonlinear coefficient and chromatic dispersion of the fundamental mode are simulated by using full-vectorial finite element method (FVFEM). The effects of structural parameters variation on these optical characteristics of the proposed MOFs are investigated. Furthermore, the As2S3 glass capillaries and jacket tubes are made by extrusion. The MOF with three layers of capillaries is fabricated by the “Stack & Draw” technique. The lowest attenuation of 6.34 dB/m of the MOF is measured at the wavelength of 4.61 μm using the cut-back method.