Optoelectronic Fibers via Selective Amplification of In-Fiber Capillary Instabilities.

Thermally drawn metal-insulator-semiconductor fibers provide a scalable path to functional fibers. Here, a ladder-like metal-semiconductor-metal photodetecting device is formed inside a single silica fiber in a controllable and scalable manner, achieving a high density of optoelectronic components over the entire fiber length and operating at a bandwidth of 470 kHz, orders of magnitude larger than any other drawn fiber device.

Silicon-in-silica spheres via axial thermal gradient in-fibre capillary instabilities.

The ability to produce small scale, crystalline silicon spheres is of significant technological and scientific importance, yet scalable methods for doing so have remained elusive. Here we demonstrate a silicon nanosphere fabrication process based on an optical fibre drawing technique. A silica-cladded silicon-core fibre with diameters down to 340 nm is continuously fed into a flame defining an axial thermal gradient and the continuous formation of spheres whose size is controlled by the feed speed is demonstrated.

All-in-fiber chemical sensing.

A new all-in-fiber trace-level chemical sensing approach is demonstrated. Photoconductive structures, embedded directly into the fiber cladding along its entire length, capture light emitted anywhere within the fiber's hollow core and transform it directly into an electrical signal. Localized signal transduction circumvents problems associated with conventional fiber-optics, including limited signal collection efficiency and optical losses.

Piezoelectric fibers for conformal acoustics.

Ultrasound transducers have many important applications in medical, industrial, and environmental settings. Large-active-area piezoelectric fibers are presented here, which can be woven into extended and flexible ultrasound transducing fabrics. This work opens significant opportunities for large-area, flexible and adjustable acoustic emission and sensing for a variety of emerging applications.

Resolving optical illumination distributions along an axially symmetric photodetecting fiber.

Photodetecting fibers of arbitrary length with internal metal, semiconductor and insulator domains have recently been demonstrated. These semiconductor devices exhibit a continuous translational symmetry which presents challenges to the extraction of spatially resolved information. Here, we overcome this seemingly fundamental limitation and achieve the detection and spatial localization of a single incident optical beam at sub-centimeter resolution, along a one-meter fiber section.