Order/Disorder Hybrid Structures in Photonic Glass Materials

Abstract

Investigations for space-selected structure ordering from nano-particles to single-crystal patterning in glasses will be described. Transparent crystallization in glass must be the best material solution to obtain novel functional glasses with a permanent second-order optical nonlinearity. We focus on the new functions created by structure ordering in glass by means of laser micro-fabrication for space-selected crystallization. Two topics in our recent experimental results of space-selected structure ordering in glass will be presented as follows: 1) Single crystalline patterning by atom heat laser processing in Sm-doped glasses for optical waveguides with second-order optical nonlinearity, 2) structure ordering of domains in crystallized glass fibers for possible photonic fiber-type devices with active signal processing.