Liquid Phase Deposition of GeO2 Glass Hollow Waveguide for Delivery of CO2 Laser Radiation

Abstract

CO2 laser (wavelength 10.6 μm) has important applications in laser surgery, material processing, infrared sensors and imaging. CO2 laser optical waveguides are gaining a central position in these applications. Glass-drawing technique and sol-gel methods have been used to prepare GeO2 and germania-based glass hollow waveguides. In this work, a GeO2 glass hollow waveguide sample was fabricated by using a liquid phase deposition (LPD) approach. The morphology, structure and optical transmission properties of the sample were studied. The results indicate that a GeO2 glass reflective layer could be formed on the inner wall of a silica glass capillary tube via the LPD process. The GeO2 glass layer and the substrate silica glass tube constitute an attenuated total reflectance (ATR) hollow waveguide structure. An nr<;1 band centering at around 10.6 μm is observed by loss spectrum analysis of the sample. The sample shows a mean loss of 1.13 dB/m for delivery of a ~35 W CO2 laser beam (TEM00).