Rare earth doped optical fiber fabrication by standard and sol-gel derived granulated oxides

We present our progress in the production of ytterbium (Yb) doped optical fibers fabricated by two variants of the granulated aluminophosphosilicate method. We show advantages and disadvantages of mixing rare earth and aluminophosphosilicate granulated oxides directly (variant 1) or by using the sol-gel method to produce doped granulate material (variant 2). For both methods we studied the effects of varying the dopant concentrations and of introducing iterative melting and milling procedures. In particular, the sol-gel based method eases the inclusion of P2O5 and thus, in combination with Al₂O₃, higher dopant concentration of Yb and Er are possible. Sintering the sol-gel material at high temperature eliminated bubbles in the core. We fabricated optical fibers that, piecewise, between individual strong scatterers, exhibited attenuation losses as low as 0.35dB/m. For our comparative study we determined volume percentage and distribution of chemical elements in the fabricated fiber glasses by the analytical technique of Energy-Dispersive X-ray, Electro Probe Microanalysis and the degree of crystallization by X-Ray Diffraction analysis. Furthermore we measured fluctuations of the refractive index profile and scattering losses of the fiber core.