Recent research on polymer optical fiber photosensitivity and highly tunable optical fibre Bragg grating

Photosensitive optical fibers provide great potential for development of many important devices. The application of photosensitivity of optical fibers has profound impact to telecommunication at the 1550nm window and, increasingly, to optical fiber sensing as well as other systems. Large tunability in fiber grating is of great significance for future dense wavelength division multiplexing where channel selectivity and reconfigurability are of prime concern. The group in University of New South Wales has recently investigated the photo sensitivities of various polymer optical fibers and has demonstrated that polymer optical fiber Bragg grating based on poly(methyl methacrylate) could be made and tuned over a range of more than 70nm, far exceeding that could possibly achieved in conventional silica fiber Bragg gratings. More recently, the photosensitivity of a low loss new polymer fibre material- CYTOP has been demonstrated. These research activities and results unfold the great potential of realizing a new class of fiber Bragg grating for various photonic applications. This paper will review the recent developments and will discuss some of the important prospects and remaining challenges in polymer fiber Bragg gratings and related topics.