Centre for Optical Fibre Technology
is a joint endeavour between DSO, A*Star and
NTU which hosts state-of-the-art fabrication equipment
for several kinds of optical fibres, ranging from standard silica fibres to a
variety of advanced specialty fibres, microstructured fibres and novel
glasses (e.g. chalcogenides). Key equipment includes a recently delivered 8.5 m dual-side fibre drawing tower, a
Modified Chemical Vapour Deposition (MCVD) fibre preform lathe hosted in 200 m2
of cleanroom space. The facility also includes 300 m2 of dedicated
chemical preparation area for glass etching and machining, advanced
fibre processing and characterisation systems, including Bragg grating engraving/cutting, fusion
splicing, thermogravimetric and thermomechanical analysers,
lithography and etching. Characterisation relies on spectrophotometry,
high-frequency network analysis, SNOM and electro-optic microcharacterisation.