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Recent progress and novel applications of photonic crystal fibers
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2010 Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 024401
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IOP PUBLISHING
REPORTS ON PROGRESS IN PHYSICS
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401 (21pp)
doi:10.1088/0034-4885/73/2/024401
Recent progress and novel applications of

photonic crystal fibers
Arismar Cerqueira S Jr
Coordenadoria de Graduaca o em Telecomunicaco es, Faculdade de Tecnologia (FT), Universidade
Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), 13484-332, Limeira, SP, Brazil
and
Optics and Photonics Research Center, UNICAMP, 13083-970, Campinas-SP, Brazil
E-mail: arismar@ft.unicamp.br
Received 9 June 2009, in final form 28 October 2009

Published 21 January 2010
Online at stacks.iop.org/RoPP/73/024401
Abstract
Photonic crystal fibers present a wavelength-scale periodic microstructure running along their
length. Their core and two-dimensional photonic crystal might be based on varied geometries
and materials, enabling light guidance due to different propagation mechanisms in an
extremely large wavelength range, extending to the terahertz regions. As a result, these fibers
have revolutionized the optical fiber technology by means of creating new degrees of freedom
in the fiber design, fabrication and applicability. This report aims to provide a detailed
statement on the recent progress and novel potential applications of photonic crystal fibers.
(Some figures in this article are in colour only in the electronic version)
This article was invited by Professor J Weiner
Contents
1. Introduction
2. Light guidance in PCFs
2.1. Index-guiding PCFs
2.2. Hollow-core PCF
2.3. All-solid PBGF
2.4. Hybrid PCF
3. Fabrication of PCFs
4. New types of PCFs
4.1. Hybrid PCFs
4.2. Liquid-based PCFs
4.3. Metal-based PCFs
4.4. Nonhexagonal-based PCFs

5. Novel potential applications of PCFs
5.1. PCF-based sensors
5.2. PCFs for mid- and far-infrared guidance
5.3. PCFs for terahertz guidance
5.4. PCFs with written gratings
5.5. PCF-based probes
5.6. PCF-based laser and amplifiers
6. Conclusions and final remarks
Acknowledgments
References
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Jonathan Knight, responsible for the fabrication of the first

PCF in 1995 [3], in 2003 [4]. In the last few years, this
novel type of optical fiber has been standing out as the focus
of attention of numerous scientists worldwide. While light
guidance in conventional fibers is based on two concentric
regions with different doping levels, core and cladding, in PCFs
it is based on subtle variations in the refractive index by means
of corralling light within a microscopic and periodic array of
air holes. This property makes the cladding index strongly
wavelength-dependent. Short wavelengths remain tightly
1. Introduction
Could photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) mark the start of a new
era in optical communications? Do they indeed represent the
renaissance of interest in optical fibers and their uses? Do
they enable light to be controlled within the fiber in ways
not previously possible or even imaginable? The first two
questions concern declarations from Professor Philip Russell,
the inventor of PCF technology, from 2001 [1] and 2003
[2]. On the other hand, the last one was posed by Professor
0034-4885/10/024401+21$90.00
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2010 IOP Publishing Ltd
Printed in the UK
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
dispersion and polarization effects. Some of these effects

e.g. optical lossesare inherent in the raw material used
to make the fibers, which is usually synthetically produced
silica, SiO2 . Nonlinearity and chromatic dispersion are
strongly affected by the material properties but can also be
influenced by the fiber design. On the other hand, polarizationmode dispersion results from imperfections in the fabrication
processes. Unlike the standard fiber technology, which is
mainly limited by how small and well-controlled the refractive
index step between core and cladding can be, PCFs can
provide an enormous range of effective indices, which can
be efficiently applied to develop fiber with extremely low or
high nonlinearity. Moreover, by properly tailoring the fiber
photonic crystal it is possible to efficiently manage the fiber
chromatic dispersion, by changing its waveguide dispersion.
PCFs are constituted by a large number of optical
materials, such as pure silica, doped silica, air, quantum dots,
other glasses, liquids and even gases. Figure 2 shows some
PCF SEM images and illustrates the huge variety of this
technology. The hybrid PCF, figure 2(a) [6], enabled, for the
first time, light to be guided and manipulated by two different
propagation mechanisms: modified total internal reflection
(TIR) from an array of air holes and antiresonant reflection
from a line of high-index inclusions. In the sub-wavelength air
core PCF [7], shown in figure 2(b), light is strongly trapped in
a central sub-wavelength tiny hole. This enhancement within
the bore, combined with the low attenuation of silica fibers,
results in a waveguide with remarkable parameters, such as
strong light concentration in air and long effective lengths,
creating a useful intensitylength trade-off to explore optical
interactions inside a nanoscale void. The high intensity in
an air hole, together with long interaction lengths, makes this
novel fiber a potential candidate for a new class of experiments
in lightmatter interaction and nonlinear optics, ranging from
nonlinear light management to atomic manipulation.
Most PCFs exhibit a periodic cladding structure this is
not required in order to obtain guidance by average index
effects. We have recently fabricated the novel PCF shown in
figure 2(c), based on two small solid cores and four air holes
with two different sizes. This fiber has been investigated for
quantum dot-based applications. A new hollow-core PCF [8]
is presented in figure 2(d). In this fiber light is guided in a
hollow-core with low loss and is unable to escape into the fiber
cladding due to the PBG effect, which is analogous to band
structures of semiconductors. Figure 2(e) presents an all-solid
photonic bandgap fiber (PBGF), composed of a pure silica core
surrounded by a photonic crystal formed by germanium-doped
rods. Finally, an index-guiding PCF with a pure silica core and
a hexagonal pattern of air holes is shown in figure 2(f ). The
main optical properties of these fibers will be explained in the
next sections.
The large index contrast and complex structure, including
huge possibility of shapes and arrangements, in PCFs make
them difficult to treat mathematically. Standard optical fiber
analysis does not help much and, in addition, in the majority
of PCF cases it is practically impossible to perform modal
analysis analytically, so Maxwells equations must be solved
numerically. Many modeling techniques have been applied
Figure 1. Comparison between living photonic crystals and a PCF.

(a) Butterfly and a SEM of its wing (courtesy of L P Biro).
(b) Photo of hybrid PCF output excited by a PCF-based
supercontinuum source.
confined to the core, so the cladding index is only slightly lower

than the core index. However, at longer wavelengths, the mode
samples more of the cladding, thus the effective index contrast
is much larger. This unusual wavelength dependence implies
a host of unusual and tailorable optical properties.
In other words, PCFs present a wavelength-scale periodic
microstructure running along their length. For this reason, they
are also called microstructured fibers. Photonic crystals rely on
a regular morphological microstructure incorporated into the
material to radically alter its optical properties. The first PCFs
were based on a two-dimensional hexagonal photonic crystal
based on air holes and, consequently, some authors refer to
them as holey fibers.
In contrast to the early days of optical fibers, when only
a few types of fibers were available, this new technology
provides new degrees of freedom in terms of light guidance,
fabrication techniques and fiber materials and structures.
These remarkable advances allow them to show a large range
of interesting and technologically enabling properties, which
have been shown to be superior to the traditional technology
in several aspects.
Many scientific inventions are either inspired by or
analogous to living beings from nature. PCF history could not
be different; its photonic crystals, figure 1(b), are very similar
to the wing structure of butterflies, figure 1(a) [5], and the skin
from the sea mouse. These animals present different colors
as a consequence of photonic bandgap (PBG)-based color
generating nano-architectures present on their wings and skin.
Photonic crystals are also analogous to semiconductor band
structures, in which there is an interaction between electrons
and the periodic potential variations created by the crystal
lattice. In PCFs periodic variations in dielectric constant occur
that imply new optical properties.
State-of-the-art optical fibers represent a careful tradeoff between optical losses, optical nonlinearity, group-velocity
2
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 2. PCF SEM images: (a) hybrid PCF; (b) sub-wavelength air core PCF (courtesy of G S Wiederhecker); (c) PCF for quantum dot
applications; (d) hollow-core PCF (courtesy of J Knight); (e) all-solid PBGF (courtesy of J Knight); (f ) index-guiding PCF (courtesy of
J Knight).
in their characterization, including the finite element methods

[9, 10], plane-wave expansion method [11], localized-function
methods [12], finite difference time domain method [13],
Fourier decomposition method [14], multipole method [15]
and multiple reciprocity boundary element method [16].
PCFs are designed and fabricated for special-purpose
applications that do not require large volumes of fibers.
Therefore, these specialty fibers are currently produced in
smaller quantities compared with traditional optical fibers,
which are mass produced for signal transmission. In other
words, despite the fact that PCFs have been commercialized
since 2001, they are more like clothes specifically made for
a sport like winter skiing rather than general-purpose off-therack clothing.
This report gives a qualitative overview on the recent
progress and novel potential applications of PCFs. It is
structured in five more sections. Section 2 explains the
light guidance in PCFs. In section 3, the PCF fabrication
process will be described based on the pictures of the stateof-the-art facilities from the Department of Physics of the
University of Bath, UK. The new PCF types are defined
and presented in section 4. Section 5 addresses the novel
potential applications of PCF technology. Conclusions and
final remarks are considered in section 6.
of PCFs:
Index-guiding PCF: based on modified TIR.
Hollow-core PCF: based on the PBG effect.
All-solid PBGF: based on the antiresonant effect, which
is central to the PBG effect in these fibers.
Hybrid PCF: provides guidance due to both propagation
mechanisms simultaneously.
2.1. Index-guiding PCFs
Index-guiding PCF [3] represents the simplest type of PCF,
since its light guidance is based on modified TIR. As shown in
figure 3(a), it has a solid core embedded in a two-dimensional
photonic crystal with a micrometer-spaced array of air holes,
traditionally arranged in a hexagonal pattern. This solid core
is basically formed by introducing a defect (omission of a
single air hole) in the photonic crystal. This idea is illustrated
in figure 3, which shows the schematic of this type of PCF
and its refractive index profile. Since the solid core has the
same material as the photonic crystal background, one can
conclude that it has a higher refractive index compared with
the cladding. Therefore, the cladding mode index is reduced
by having a microstructured array of air holes in it rather than
using different materials.
The refractive index step in index-guiding PCFs is far
higher compared with that of the traditional technology, which
is typically 12%. Their design parameters are the air hole
diameter (d), the inter-hole spacing () and the number of
layers of air holes. The photonic crystal is usually described
by the air-filling fraction or the ratio d/. This ratio ranges
from a few percent up to 90%, whereas the inter-hole spacing
values are typically from 1.0 to 20 m. By manipulating them,
one can easily change the propagation constant of the guided
mode and, consequently, tailor the fiber modal, dispersion and
nonlinear properties. Therefore, these parameters should be
designed in accordance to the desired application.
2. Light guidance in PCFs

Light in PCFs can be guided either by TIR or/and PBG effect,
depending on the core and cladding photonic crystal materials.
Their core can be formed by pure silica; doped silica; high
nonlinearity glasses, for instance tellurite, bismuth and lead
silicate; air; liquids; gases, for example hydrogen, xenon,
acetylene and methane; and quantum dots.
Taking into consideration the propagation mechanism
behind light guidance in PCFs, there are basically four types
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Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 3. Index-guiding PCF.
Light in an index-guiding PCFas expressed by the

nameis guided by TIR as in standard optical fibers.
However, due to the large refractive index step and the
possibility of managing its wavelength-scale cladding photonic
crystal, it provides a large number of unique properties that
are not obtainable in conventional fibers. For instance, an
index-guiding PCF can become endlessly single mode [17],
which means it is always single mode no matter how small
the wavelength of the light is. This fascinating endlessly
single-mode behavior has been efficiently explained by Philip
Russell by viewing the array of air holes as a modal filter or
sieve [2]. Since light is evanescent in air, the holes act as
strong barriers, thus they can be considered the wire mesh of
a sieve. The field of the fundamental mode fits into the indexguiding PCF core with a single lobe of diameter roughly equal
to 2. Therefore it cannot escape through the wire mesh
because the silica gaps (between the air holes encircling the
core) are too narrow. In contrast, the lobe dimensions of the
higher order modes are smaller so they can slip between the
gaps. As the relative hole size d/ is made larger, successive
higher order modes become trapped. However, if the air holes
are small enough the fiber presents the endlessly single-mode
behavior. Mortensen has recently demonstrated, by means
of a semi-analytical approach, that PCFs are endlessly single
mode for a normalized air hole diameter (d/) smaller than
0.42 for an infinite cladding, independently of the background
material [18]. Details on numerical studies of second mode
transition and a generalized phase diagram of the second mode
of PCFs with a finite number of layers can be found in [19].
PCF losses have been efficiently reduced since the first
fabricated fiber [3]. The record in index-guiding PCFs at
1.55 m is 0.18 dB km1 [20], which is comparable to those of
conventional fibers. This remarkable result has been obtained
by reducing the OH absorption loss and improving the air hole
surfaces. This PCF presents intrinsic loss lower than that of a
conventional silica fiber.
By omitting more air holes in the core region, it is possible
to fabricate a large mode area single-mode PCF, which supports
a core diameter of 50 free-space wavelengths [21]. This
advantage can be applied to the development of fiber lasers
and amplifiers. Another strategy to improve the performance
of these devices is using high numerical aperture PCFs based

on an ytterbium-doped all-glass double-cladding, as proposed
by Furusawa et al in 2001 [22].
By using index-guiding PCFs, it is also possible to
fabricate a highly birefringent PCF by using different air hole
sizes in cladding [23]. It has been demonstrated that this
PCF type presents a birefringence 10 times larger than that
of conventional fibers and is insensitive to temperature unlike
traditional polarization maintaining fibers, such as bow-tie and
elliptical core ones. Moreover, single-polarization PCFs with
large mode areas have been fabricated by using stress applying
elements in the cladding photonic crystal [24, 25]. These
elements have a different expansion coefficient compared with
fused silica and therefore generate a permanent stress field
during the drawing of the fiber. Due to the elasto-optical effect,
birefringence is introduced.
The chromatic dispersion can be easily managed in PCF by
tailoring the waveguide dispersion. The remarkable possibility
of changing the air hole diameter, the inter-hole spacing and
the core size permits one to efficiently change the parameter
D and the dispersion slope, S0 . For instance, highly nonlinear
index-guiding PCFs exhibiting anomalous dispersion at visible
wavelengths have been demonstrated [26]. By mirroring
the waveguide dispersion to the material dispersion, ultraflattened dispersion PCFs have been numerically investigated
by Ferrando et al [27] and fabricated by Reeves et al [28].
Besides the large contribution of waveguide dispersion to
the total dispersion of the fiber, the use of PCFs significantly
enhances the waveguide nonlinearity by two different
strategies: by strongly confining a guided electromagnetic
mode, which then enhances the optical interaction with
the fiber material; and by fabricating them from a single
material constituent that has high intrinsic nonlinearity such
as chalcogenide [29], tellurite [30], bismuth silicate [31] and
lead silicate [32] glasses. By taking advantage of these
unique features, PCFs have undoubtedly revolutionized the
area of nonlinear optics. Their potential applications include
four-wave mixing [33, 34], multimode phase matching [35],
pulse compression [36] and generation of ultra-broadband
supercontinuum (SC) [37].
4
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
2.1.1. SC generation. SC generation is arguably one

of the most important applications of PCFs [26, 3739].
It is due to a range of interconnected nonlinear effects
able to significantly broaden the initial frequency spectrum.
The huge bandwidth and high spectral brightness of SC
sources give them potential for different applications, such
as spectroscopy, optical frequency measurement, coherence
tomography, femtosecond-pulse phase stabilization and fiber
characterization.
Before the advent of PCFs, SC was generally obtained by
using femtosecond lasers and applying the concept of comblike dispersion profiled fiber (CDPF) [40]. It comprises a
long nonlinear medium consisting of N segments of cascaded
dispersion shifted fibers and highly nonlinear fibers; in this
way one can properly design the dispersion profile (map)
along the nonlinear fiber. On the other hand, the possibility
of fabricating PCFs with a very small core and tailorable zerodispersion wavelength, which can be designed close to the
pump wavelength, made it possible to develop compact SC
sources based on some meters of highly nonlinear PCFs and
Nd : YAG nanosecond lasers [34]. In this case, a broad and
flat SC extending from 500 nm to beyond 1750 nm was also
demonstrated using the same pump source at 1064 nm.
PCF tapers based on traveling flame technology have
been fabricated to develop SC sources for optical coherence
tomography (OCT) [39]. In this way, the PCF could be
heated and stretched in order to manipulate its dispersion
and nonlinear properties for obtaining a compact, portable,
powerful light source suitable for ultra-high resolution OCT
imaging systems. The decrease in the fiber diameter, and
consequently in pitch, reduces the effective area, increasing
the nonlinear response. Furthermore, since the fiber is tapered
only locally, light can be launched into the untapered end of
the fiber, allowing much better coupling efficiency and good
mechanical stability. At the end, a taper waist length of 100 mm
capable of a free space resolution of 1.5 m was obtained.
Another strategy of realizing efficient SC sources is
using PCF based on materials with high intrinsic nonlinearity.
Domachuck et al have reported an impressive SC generation
with a bandwidth of over 4000 nm by using only 8.0 mm of
a highly nonlinear tellurite PCF [41]. The use of short fiber
mitigates the relative high loss of tellurite glass, making them
even more interesting for nonlinear experiments. Moreover,
since for short lengths the SC generation process is mainly
driven by self-phase modulation, the SC generation is much
more understandable and controllable in this case.
both air-guided and surface modes, the fundamental mode

can be selectively excited by careful designing of the launch
optics. Moreover, the higher order modes have in general
much higher confinement and scattering losses as compared
with the fundamental mode; it is often possible to exploit
such differential loss in order to obtain an effectively single
mode output at the desired wavelength, provided a sufficiently
long length of the fiber can be employed [44]. Additionally,
hollow-core PCFs enable light guidance in a hollow core with
low attenuation over kilometer length scales, something that is
completely impossible in conventional optical fibers.
Hollow-core PCFs rely on a 2D photonic crystal formed
by an array of air holes, which are generally present at as
high as 90% air-filling factor. TIR is not possible in this case,
since the cladding index (mixture of pure silica and air) is
higher than the air core index. Light guidance is attained by
coherent Bragg scattering, where light at wavelengths within
well-defined stop bands is prohibited from propagating in the
photonic crystal cladding and is confined to a central defect.
Only certain wavelength bands are confined and guided down
the fiber. Each band corresponds to the presence of a full
two-dimensional PBG in the photonic crystal cladding. For
this reason, these fibers are called photonic bandgap fibers
(PBGFs), in which light is guided in a low-index core by the
PBG effect. In the PBGs, the photonic crystal cladding acts as
a mirror and more than 99% of the optical power is located in
the air and not in glass [45]. Therefore, light with wavelengths
corresponding to the bandgaps cannot escape the core and so
is guided along the fiber with low loss.
The hollow core is formed by removing some capillaries
from the center of the stack, 7 or even 19, producing in this
way a relatively large core that improves the chances of finding
a guided mode. In order to get guidance, it is necessary to
have an array of air holes with high air-filling fraction and
small pitch (distance between adjacent air holes in the lattice).
At first it was believed that a periodic cladding with identical
layers of air holes would be necessary. However, Skibina et al
have recently broken this paradigm of lattice homogeneity by
fabricating a chirped PCF with a radial chirp into the photonic
crystal [46].
At a given frequency, the bandgaps appear in a range
of values of the propagation constant in which one would
normally expect propagating modes, and they are surrounded
at both higher and lower values of by propagating modes.
Band gaps can occur for values of < k (k is the vacuum
wavevector), and so can be used to trap light in an air core.
However, the range of k > for which bandgaps occur is
limited. This means that in a PBGF only a limited range of
wavelengths can be expected to be guided in the hollow core.
The prediction of the PBGs in hollow-core bandgap fibers
is usually done by analyzing the photonic density of states
(DOS) of the cladding photonic crystal [47]. The DOS is
defined to be the number of states between and + for
a given k0 . In practice, the k plane is divided into a
uniform grid and each grid unit is filled with a certain color
which is determined by the numbers of allowed values within
the grid unit. In this kind of design, it is vital to know where,
in the frequencymomentum space, the DOS of the cladding
2.2. Hollow-core PCF

Hollow fibers based on the standard technology use external
reflection and are thus inherently weak and highly multimode,
allowing only relatively short lengths [42]. On the other hand,
hollow-core PCFs [43] provide quasi-single mode operation by
guiding light in a hollow core surrounded by a microstructured
cladding formed by a periodic arrangement of air holes in
silica. They are considered quasi-single mode because in
spite of most hollow-core PCFs supporting a number of optical
modes at any given wavelength within the band gap, including
5
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
is depressed or enhanced with respect to the vacuum. By

calculating the dispersion surfaces at many frequencies and
sampling them on a mesh of points, one can generate maps
of the DOS against normalized frequency and momentum
deviation from the air line ( = k0 ), from which the regions of
guidance (zero DOS) or quasi-guidance (low DOS) can readily
be identified.
Hollow-core PCF has the greatest potential for extremely
low loss fibers because light travels predominantly in the
hollow core. Losses as low as 1.2 dB km1 have been achieved
by enlarging the core from 7 to 19 unit cells in hollowcore fibers and reducing the overlap of the fundamental
mode with the glassair surface modes [45]. Losses can be
mitigated through fiber design, and attenuation of the order of
0.1 dB km1 (less than the best conventional fibers) is plausible
in accordance to theoretical predictions.
Figure 4. Hybrid PCF.
cutoff conditions. Modal cutoff corresponds to the wavelength

at which the high-index inclusion switches from supporting
n + 1 modes to n modes. The minima of the spectrum occur at
these wavelengths, thus the cladding-state bandgaps are the
wavelength ranges between the cutoffs of the higher order
modes of an isolated rod. The arrangement of the rods has
little influence on the spectral position of the stop bands [15].
However, the confinement loss is extremely reduced when the
number of layers is increased [49].
The key features of PBGFs are low attenuation, easy
fabrication, guidance in a set of finite frequency windows and
unusual dispersion characteristics. Another fascinating feature
of this kind of PCF is that it is possible to match the group
indices at widely different wavelengths because of the presence
of multiple bandgaps. Furthermore, the spectra of these fibers
can be tuned by changing the refractive index of the inclusions,
so they can be used as tunable devices [50].
One of the most interesting aspects of PBG fibers is that
their dispersion properties are different from those of indexguiding fibers. As in hollow-core fibers, the group index curve
in each band drops to a minimum before rising again. In
hollow-core fibers the minimum (which corresponds to the
zero in group-velocity dispersion) is shifted toward the shortwavelength edge of the bandgap as a result of the effects of
anomalous waveguide dispersion. However, in these solidcore fibers the strongly normal dispersion of the core material
becomes increasingly dominant at short wavelengths, shifting
the minimum point of the group index curve to the longwavelength side of the transmission band.
Bouwmans et al have fabricated an all-solid PBGF with
a low-loss region around 1550 nm [51]. It has been shown
that this fiber can be used as single mode even for a fiber core
diameter as large as 20 m. This fiber opens the possibility to
realize a low-loss large mode area bandgap fiber with a doped
core and/or Bragg gratings.
2.3. All-solid PBGF

Although some of the most spectacular properties of PBGFs
are found in fibers with hollow cores, PBG guidance can also
be observed when the core is solid [48]. In this case, the
fiber PBG is formed by an arrangement of high-index solid
inclusions. PBGs are often associated with large refractive
index contrasts, but all-solid PBGFs with an index contrast of
only 1% have been demonstrated, in which the pure silica core
is surrounded by an array of germanium-doped silica rods [49].
The motivation for making such a fiber is to utilize some of
the unique properties of PBGFs, while having a fiber that is
easy to fabricate, since the use of air holes can be completely
eliminated from the fabrication process.
All-solid PBGF basically consists of an array of
unconnected high-index rods in a low-index background.
Particularly in the all-silica PBGFs, germanium-doped rods
are embedded in a pure silica background. Differently from
the index-guiding PCFs, for these fibers, guidance exists only
in restricted bands of wavelength, which coincide with the
PBGs formed by the two-dimensional photonic crystal of the
high-index rods.
The guidance in all-solid PBGFs can be described
by the antiresonant reflecting optical waveguide (ARROW)
model [50]. This model has been widely used in the field
of integrated optics. The ARROW model assumes light is
confined to the core by antiresonant reflection from the highindex layers in the cladding. Each high-index layer can be
considered as a FabryPerot-like (FP) resonator. Narrow-band
resonances of this FP resonator correspond to the transmission
minima for the light propagating in the core. Therefore, at
resonance the high-index layer becomes effectively transparent
and light escapes completely from the entire structure. Wide
antiresonances of the FP correspond to high transmission
regions. In the all-solid PBGFs, the high-index rods in the
cladding permit light to leak out from the core if they are
on resonance, but they reflect it back into the core if they
are antiresonant. This is a simple and useful simplification
of the full bandgap description. Each high-index inclusion
(layer) of the structure is considered as a waveguide that
supports normal modes, along with their associated modal
2.4. Hybrid PCF

The hybrid PCF [6] is composed of air holes and germaniumdoped silica rods disposed around an undoped silica core, as
shown in figure 4. The air holes are arranged in an hexagonal
pattern as in the index-guiding PCFs, whereas the high-index
6
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 5. Stack-and-draw PCF fabrication technique.
rods replace a single row of air holes along one of the PCF axes,
forming a one-dimensional PBG in this direction. Compared
with the traditional PCFs, one more design parameter must be
included, the rod diameter D.
Light guidance in hybrid PCFs can be explained as
follows. Along the y-axis the core has a higher refractive index
than the effective refractive index of the cladding [6], so along
this axis light can be guided by TIR from two half-spaces of
holey silica, as in the index-guiding PCFs. On the other hand,
along the x-axis TIR is not possible, since the rods have a higher
index compared with the core. In this case, confinement takes
place only in restricted bands of wavelength, which coincide
with the PBGs. In addition, in all-solid PBGFs, these PBGs
occur at the antiresonant conditions of the high-index inserts
and are described by the ARROW model [50].
In other words, light is evanescent below the refractive
index of the cladding (nc ) [6]. For effective indices (neff )
between nr and nsi , the high-index rods are resonant so light
is guided into them and vanishes in the core. The region
between nsi and nc is the most important one, in which light
can be confined to the hybrid PCF core. Basically, light is
confined to a plane by TIR (index-guided mode), and within
that plane in the regions of the bandgaps, it is confined to a
central pure silica core (nsi ) by antiresonant reflection from
two linear arrays of Ge-doped silica inclusions (nr ). Under
these circumstances, light will be successfully guided by both
propagation mechanisms. The advantages and applications of
this novel PCF type will be described in section 4.
two thermally, chemically and optically compatible glasses

to form their core and cladding, as otherwise required within
conventional fibers.
A wide range of materials has been used to fabricate
PCFs, including chalcogenide [29], lead silicate [30], bismuth
silicate [31] and tellurite glasses [32], and even polymers [52].
The use of different materials opens up a new degree of freedom
for the fiber design. For instance, Oskooi et al [53] have
recently proposed a chalcogenide-based PCF with a complete
gap at a propagation constant = 0, which extends into
the nonzero region as well. A fiber providing this type
of bandgap can be applied to enhance nonlinear and other
material interactions, such as for hollow-core fibers in gassensor applications. This review is focused on silica-based
PCFs; more details concerning PCFs based on other materials
can be found in [54].
The stack-and-draw procedure has been devised by the
group from the University of Bath and is the most used in PCF
fabrication. This technique provides high versatility, allowing
complex lattices to be assembled from individual stackable
units of the correct size and shape. Solid, empty or doped glass
regions can be easily incorporated. It involves no chemical
process and its summary is illustrated in figure 5.
Initially, it is necessary to design the preform by using a
high accurate drawing tool. The ratio of inner diameter (ID) to
outer diameter (OD) of the capillaries must be chosen to closely
match the air-filling fraction (d/) of the final structure. This
design defines the diameters of stackable units that are drawn in
a process called drawing capillaries; the circular silica tubes
and rods of several centimeters external diameter are drawn on
the fiber-drawing tower in order to reduce its diameter to about
1.0 mm. This process consists of feeding them into the furnace
and heating it up to a temperature of around 1950 C, whilst
pulling it from the other end at a higher speed. The capillaries
and rods are pulled from the furnace by two opposing rubber
3. Fabrication of PCFs
Fabrication is a key factor in the designing and developing of
new fibers. The PCF technology not only provides a great
controllability of the fiber design, but also allows fibers to
be made from just a single material, eliminating needs for
7
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 6. Photographs of stacking and preform preparation.
belts that form the cane puller. The pulling speed can also
be finely controlled and is normally around 1 m min1 . The
capillaries and rods can be automatically cut into the specified
lengths. Clearly as the diameter of the capillaries becomes
smaller, the more flexible they become. As a result they
become increasingly difficult to handle and are often cut to
shorter lengths to alleviate this problem.
The stack is then built by hand on a macroscopic scale
(10 mm in diameter) in order to obtain the desired airsilica
structure. A hexagonally shaped jig is used to do the stacking,
figure 6(a). This jig can be adjusted to suit stacks up to a
diameter of around 2.5 cm. Capillaries are placed one row
at a time and intentional guiding defects are placed during
this stage. Static electricity can seriously hinder the stacking
procedure, particularly if the capillaries have thin walls and are
therefore easily charged. A high voltage electric field is usually
applied to eliminate this static build-up using the device shown
at the rear of the jig. The electric field creates a stream of ions
that neutralize any charge on the capillaries (or rods). The
corners of the stack are usually removed to fit the hexagonal
structure in a round hole. The remaining space between the
stack and the tube should be filled with small rods of pure
silica to further reduce any air gaps (external rods painted blue
in figure 6(a).
Dopants, e.g. germanium, aluminum, erbium and
ytterbium, can be incorporated into the individual stacked
element to facilitate the development of fiber devices such as
fiber lasers [22] and amplifiers [55]. Moreover, PCFs with
multiple cores are easily obtained by replacing some capillaries
by solid pure silica rods [56].
Once the stack is complete, it is carefully inserted into
a tube, as shown in figure 6(b). This tube must have a slot
through which the vacuum can be applied during the fiber

fabrication. This tube is then mounted in a glass working
lathe and heated up by a traversing burner in order to fuse
the top end for ensuring the vacuum will be properly applied.
Figure 6(c) shows the tube inside the burner used for this
process, figure 6(d). Posteriorly, the stack is drawn into meterlong preforms with a few millimeters diameter.
In step four, the resulting preform is drawn down to fiber
dimensions using a conventional fiber-drawing tower. If a
large scale-reduction factor is required, a two-step drawing
procedure is generally used: the preform is initially drawn to
canes (3.0 mm in diameter) and then these canes are drawn
to fiber. In the first stage, a vacuum is applied in order to
collapse the holes between the capillaries and rods, called
interstitial holes. The furnace temperature and drawing speeds
are set to ensure that the stacks structure is maintained whilst
all the holes between the capillaries and rods collapse under
vacuum. The typical range of temperature is 19002100 C.
Figure 7(a) presents a preform on the top of the furnace, when
the temperature is about 2000 C. The cane is exemplified in
figure 7(b) by showing the remaining piece of the preform.
Finally, the canes are drawn to fibers using equipment
similar to that used in the capillary and rod drawing. The
difference is that in this stage a capstan will be used in place
of the cane puller. It is a set of belts and wheels that pull the
fiber and help it to be stored on the drum. It also measures
the fiber tension. This parameter gives a good indication of
how the temperature affects the fiber structure. A low tension
reading usually means that the temperature is too hot and
holey structure is collapsing under surface tension. On the
other hand, if the tension is too high the fiber can break when
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Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 7. Cane fabrication.
coiled on the drum. It can be changed throughout the drawing

process by varying the furnace temperature. The fabrication
parameters, such as preform feed, capstan speed, furnace
temperature and pressure are set with the purpose of getting
the fiber design parameters (air hole size, pitch and germanium
rod diameters). For example, at high temperatures, the holes
reduce in size due to surface tension effects. Additionally,
the hole size can be controlled to some extent by varying the
pressure within them. This is achieved by using a nitrogen
line fitted to the top of the preform holder. In this way, a range
of fiber profiles can be produced from one starting preform.
The external diameter is continuously verified by the diameter
control and the desired PCF structure is checked by examining
the fiber samples using high-precision microscopes.
The final step of fiber fabrication is fiber coating, in
which the newly drawn optical fibers are coated with highperformance polymers to improve their mechanical properties
and permit them to be stored on drums without breaking. The
coating cup adds a polymer coating to the outside of the fiber.
Afterwards, it is cured by ultraviolet (UV) exposure. At last,
the fabricated fiber is stored on the drum using the drum winder.
It is worth noting that the possibility of using new
materials, with lower melting points, facilitates the use of
other techniques apart from capillary stacking for preform
production. In fact, other techniques such as extrusion [32],
built-in-casting [57] and drilling [58] have also been
reported.
4.1. Hybrid PCFs

Hybrid PCFs have been intensively exploited in the last
four years [6, 5964]. They are composed of air holes and
germanium-doped silica rods disposed around an undoped
silica core, as shown in figure 8(a). Its guidance mechanism
was described in section 2.4; the objective of the current section
is to present its main optical properties and applications. The
main advantage of this novel PCF is taking advantage of both
types of PCF, index-guiding and PBGF, in a unique fiber.
Figure 8 presents a scanning electron microscope (SEM)
image of a hybrid PCF and a transmission spectrum of a hybrid
PCF with 8 PBGs in the silica transparency window. This
spectrum has been obtained by coupling a SC source at the
fiber input. As described previously, these bandgaps can be
efficiently predicted by applying the ARROW model [50].
The relevant properties of PBGFs, such as dispersion
[6, 61] and nonlinearity [59], are closely related to their modal
intensity patterns. The pattern of hybrid PCF modes can
be construed as arising when the more dispersive modes of
the high-index rods intersect with the mode of a standard
index-guiding PCF, leading to anti-crossings. The modal field
patterns are radically different in the bandgaps and around
the anti-crossing points. Figure 9 displays some near-field
measurements obtained using CCD cameras. It demonstrates
that the hybrid modes are supermodes of the core and highindex microstructure modes. In other words, they are linear
combinations of the core mode with the corresponding highindex rod mode, which is the closest one to be resonant.
Therefore, the confined hybrid modes adopt the character of
the corresponding high-index rod mode.
Figure 9(a) presents a three-dimensional near-field image,
excited by using an external cavity laser at 1550 nm.
Figures 9(b)(d) were obtained by using a SC source and a
color CCD camera. In the last two cases bandpass filters
have been used to select the wavelength. It is clear that
the light is well confined to the hybrid PCF core, because
these wavelengths are close to the middle of the bandgap,
where the calculated confinement loss is below 1.0 dB km1 .
In figure 9(b) no filter has been applied; for this reason we
can observe light being propagated not only in the PCF core
(fundamental mode), but also in the germanium rods (higher
order modes).
4. New types of PCFs

Standard optical fibers are based on a simple concentric corecladding geometry and limited by the small and well-controlled
refractive index step between core and cladding. On the other
hand, the PCF technology provides great flexibility in terms of
geometry and refractive index profile. The main types of PCFs
are the following: index-guiding PCF, from 1995; hollow-core
PCF, from 1999; and all-solid PBGF, from 2004. Recently,
other PCF types based on different core and cladding materials
and structures have been proposed. This section is focused on
four new PCFs: hybrid PCFs, liquid-based PCFs, metal-based
PCFs and nonhexagonal-based PCFs.
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Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 8. Hybrid PCF.
Figure 9. Near-field measurements of hybrid PCFs.
The possibility of exploiting both propagation mechanisms enables nonlinear fiber-optic experiments in new dispersion regimes. We have observed, for the first time, nonlinear interaction and wavelength conversion between two different bandgaps of an optical fiber [59]. The fiber used for
this nonlinear experiment has three bandgaps [59]: the first
one is semi-infinitive from approximately 1400 nm, which suffers from very high confinement loss; the second and third
bandgaps present acceptable confinement loss and are located
at 800 nm band and visible range, respectively. These last two
low-attenuation regions are relevant to this work, because a
femtosecond system has been used centered at 830 nm at 1 kHz
repetition rate. A 60 fs pulse was coupled into 28 cm of a hybrid
PCF. By using a variable attenuator, the average input power
(Pin) was controlled and varied between 10 and 240 W. By
increasing Pin, the initial pulse becomes broadened, and the
resonant radiation emitted by a soliton was observed in the
visible range (green light), as shown in figure 10. The soliton
was situated in the second PBG, whereas the dispersive radiation lay in the third PBG. This implies nonlinear interaction
between spectral components within these bandgaps, which
becomes efficient only when the radiation condition occurs.
The radiation condition depends only on the dispersion of the
second PBG, where the soliton is launched. The dispersive
radiation is created in the normal dispersion region of the third
PBG, whereas the soliton is in the anomalous dispersion region
of the second PBG. The strong dispersive radiation obtained
in the visible range demonstrates that the soliton is launched
The unique modal properties of hybrid PCFs make them

naturally high birefringent and polarization maintaining, since
light is guided along their two orthogonal polarization states
by two different propagation mechanisms [60, 63]. We
have recently successfully demonstrated measurements of
polarization dependent loss as high as 21 dB [60].
The very strong birefringence of hybrid PCFs comes from
the significant stress field, as in the polarization maintaining
large mode area PCFs [24]. In the hybrid case, it is produced
by germanium inclusions, which are positioned along a line
through the structure and work as stress-applying elements
and give rise to an asymmetric stress field within the core
that induces a sizeable birefringence [65]. The asymmetric
stress distribution will split the polarization states of the weakly
guided fundamental mode, resulting in a single-polarization
fiber, and cause a polarization dependent loss. This physical
phenomenon can be described as follows: if a stress field is
induced by the stress-applying elements, it is translated into
a change in the refractive index thanks to the photo-elastic
effect. For a stress field, the index change in the direction of the
germanium rods is positive, whereas in the transverse direction
the stress is reversed. This translates into a downshift of the
refractive index in this direction and dramatically changes the
modal properties, implying very strong birefringence. As
a conclusion, hybrid PCFs can be efficiently applied to the
development of gyroscopes, fiber polarizers, and fiber lasers
and amplifiers [64] to ensure linearly polarized output.
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Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 10. Nonlinear interaction between two bandgaps of a hybrid PCF.
very close to the PCF zero-wavelengths (0 ), owing to the exponential sensitivity of the radiations intensity to its spectral
detuning with the soliton. In the best case, the spectral intensity of the resonant radiation peaked at 2.7 dB below that of
the broadened pulse in the pump-guiding PBG [59].
4.2. Liquid-based PCFs
PCFs provide unprecedented degrees of freedom in tailoring
their modal, dispersion and nonlinear properties. Additional to
the management of size and position of their air holes, which
are defined during the fabrication process, one can tailor their
optical characteristics by post-processing the PCFs. This postprocessing can be realized in different ways [66]: fiber tapering
[67]; by inserting liquids into their core and/or cladding holes
[68]; by injecting gases [69]; or even by incorporating quantum
dots [70]. Except for tapering, in all the other cases it is
possible to increase the interaction between the light and hole
material, maintaining the fiber microstructure.
The marriage of liquid crystals and photonic crystals
was proposed by Busch and John in 1999 [71]. They have
demonstrated that a tunable PBG material can be constituted
by infiltrating optically birefringent nematic liquid crystal
into the void regions of an inverse opal PBG material. In
this way, tunable light localization effects can be realized
by manipulating the orientational disorder in the nematic.
The concept of liquid PCFs [72] was introduced by Eggleton
et al in 2001 and the first successful fabricated liquid PCF
was reported by Larsen et al in 2003 [66]. Liquid PCFbased devices provide high temperature dependence, making
them potentially interesting for thermal and electrical tunable
devices.
The propagation mechanism behind light guidance in the
first liquid PCF was PBG effect [73]. It was based on an
index-guiding PCF filled with the liquid crystal with refractive
indices higher than that of silica. However, in the last few
years many index-guiding liquid PCFs have been proposed
for different applications, such as evanescent-wave sensors
for the detection of biomolecules in aqueous solutions [74],
Figure 11. PCF with lateral access (courtesy of C M B Cordeiro).
electrical tuning devices [75], all-optical modulators [76],

optical signal processing [72], nonlinear applications [77] and
tunable birefringent fibers [78].
Cordeiro et al have proposed a simple and robust technique
to laterally access the PCF holes [68], figure 11. It is based
on the increase in the gas pressure inside the holes, while
local heat is locally provided to the fiber section so that it
melts, expands and laterally tears, creating a side hole. It was
demonstrated that the side hole can be solely connected to the
hollow core in order to selectively fill it. An advantage of this
method is that the filling procedure is completely independent
of and compatible with the optical alignment procedure, since
no contact with the fiber tips is needed.
The same group has introduced the concept of doublefilled liquid PCFs [79]. They have simultaneously inserted a
liquid into the core of a hollow-core PCF and a different liquid
into its cladding. The resultant fiber is a liquid-core, liquidcladding waveguide in which the two liquids can be selected
to yield specific guidance properties, including single-mode
behavior.
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Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
However, filling the micrometer air holes in long fiber

lengths is extremely challenging, and the uniformity required
along the fiber length has meant that the waveguiding
properties of such metallic structures have until now hardly
been reported. Hou et al have developed metal-based PCFs
obtained during the fiber drawing [86]. They have replaced
the first six capillaries, immediately around the solid silica core
rod, with silica-coated copper rods. The other capillaries have
been maintained for reducing confinement loss. Single-mode
visible light guidance was observed in this 7.0 cm long metallic
fiber. The minimum measured attenuation was 6 dB cm1 .
PBGF-based SPR sensors for measuring changes in
low refractive index analytes have also been proposed and
numerically analyzed [83]. In such sensors, a Gaussian-like
fiber core mode was phase matched with a surface plasmon
propagating along the metal-based PCF. As a consequence and
advantage of bandgap guidance, the operational wavelength
of such sensors can be designed anywhere from the visible
to near-IR. The applications of metal-based PCFs are
beyond sensors, such as optical circuitry, fiber-integrated
optoelectronic components, electrochemistry, glass poling,
liquid crystal devices, imaging on the sub-wavelength scale
and other plasmonic devices.
Figure 12. Metal-based PCF (courtesy of C M B Cordeiro).
4.3. Metal-based PCFs

Physicists and engineers have been interested in surface waves
since the beginning of the twentieth century. In 1956,
Pines proposed that the electron energy loss in solids can be
interpreted as wave excitation within an electron plasma [80].
He coined the term plasmon [81] to indicate that the resulting
plasma wave excitation exhibited finite quanta of energy. This
plasmon model has been applied to thin metallic foils [82] and
to study the plasmon surface waves at the boundary between a
metal electron plasma and a dielectric medium.
Surface-plasmon polaritons are formed at the interface
between the metal and the dielectric as a result of the
intense photonelectron interactions. They result in strong
field enhancement that can be very useful for increasing the
sensitivity of optical sensors or the strength of nonlinear
effects. Surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensors are usually
implemented in bulk prisms. However, the use of optical
waveguides and fibers provides miniaturization, a high degree
of integration and remote sensing capabilities. Moreover, PCF
geometry can be designed in order to enhance lightmatter
interaction and facilitate efficient phase matching between the
optical guided modes and resonant modes, such as plasmons
[83]. For this reason, some research groups have been working
on the development of metal-based PCFs [8490]. Figure 12
presents a metal-based PCF with integrated electrodes [88].
The most important challenge in working with metalbased PCFs is to fabricate a nanoscale metallic structure
with reduced high optical absorption in the metal and
strong metallight interactions. Different materials and
fabrication methodologies have been proposed for ensuring
these properties. Most published works regarding fabrication
of metal-guiding PCFs have been based on deposition or
incorporation of metal materials [85, 86, 88, 90]. Infiltration
of transparent material into the fiber air holes allows for
long interaction lengths between fiber guided modes and
those from the inserted material. The maximum fiber length
reported for these fibers was 7.0 cm and they were based on
different materials: silver and gold [85, 89], BiSn and AuSn
alloys [88]. Hautakorpi et al have proposed a SPR sensor based
on a three-hole microstructured fiber coated with a low-index
dielectric layer on top and a deposited gold layer [90].
4.4. Nonhexagonal-based PCFs

The first PCF was based on a hexagonal array of air holes
and the huge majority of PCFs are based on this approach.
However, the unprecedented degrees of freedom provided by
this technology include different geometries, such as octagonal
structures with isosceles triangular-latticed cladding [91],
square-lattice structures [92], core-ring structures [93] and
circular rings of air holes [94].
A highly nonlinear octagonal PCF with isosceles
triangular-latticed cladding was proposed for the telecommunication window [95]. It is based on two different air hole sizes
and two different inter-hole spacings. This strategy of modulating the air hole sizes by scaling down the dimensions of the first
ring was applied in order to overcome the difficulty of obtaining highly nonlinear PCFs for the telecommunication window
with uniform cladding. A fiber has been numerically obtained
with the following characteristics: dispersion-flattened of
0.05 ps nm1 km1 in the wavelength range from 1.46 to
1.66 m; nonlinear coefficient of 27 W1 km1 at 1.55 m and
low confinement losses less than 0.06 dB km1 .
Millo et al reported the fabrication of octagonal PCF based
on silver halide materials for the mid-IR range in 2008 [91].
The transparency of silica halide materials from 5 to 17 mm in
conjunction with the advantages of index-guiding PCFs over
regular step-index fibers, such as a wide spectral range and
large core area, allowed the fabrication of a fiber with a large
core diameter of 110 m, single-mode operation at 10.6 m, a
wide spectral range and a round mode profile. These octagonal
PCFs can be considered important for applications such as
infrared fiber lasers, spatial filtering and interferometry.
Square-lattice hollow-core PCFs were fabricated in
2008 [92] (figure 13).
This fiber presents large-pitch
rectangular-shaped core defect and exhibits similar guidance
12
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
requirements of small size, low weight and low power

consumption. As discussed in the previous sections, PCFs
provide new ways of guiding and manipulating light, so that
the sensor performance has been improved considerably in
terms of accuracy and precision [72, 98].
The PCF core, cladding and hybrid modes make them
very attractive for sensor applications, since all these modes
can be excited and measured in a controlled fashion [99]. For
example, while all modes are sensitive to the temperature
and strain perturbations, only some of the cladding modes
are sensitive to the surrounding media changes. Therefore,
in addition to the unusual properties inherent to the PCF
microstructure, post-processing techniquessuch as tapering
[67] and injection of gas [69], liquids [72] and metal film [83]
are also applied to further enhance the sensor performance.
For this reason, PCF-based solutions have been spread out to
many sensor classes: temperature sensors [35, 99, 100], strain
sensors [99], pressure [101], electric field sensors [75], bend
sensors [102], biosensors [98], fluorescence sensors [103] and
gas sensors [104].
Particularly, Passaro et al have demonstrated the
feasibility of a biosensor for detecting the hybridization of
DNA molecules [98]. They have brought biological samples
inside the holes surrounding the fiber hollow core, thus making
the interaction with the guided light easier. In this way, a
significant fraction of the guided-mode field travels along the
fiber as an evanescent field, reaching the samples inside the
holes.
Photo-written fiber Bragg gratings (FBG) have been
proposed by Chen et al for developing multi-parameter optical
sensors [99]. They selectively excite cladding modes in
special PCFs that have a small fraction of the core co-doped
with germanium to increase their photosensitivity relative to
undoped PCFs and fluorine to maintain the refractive index
of the doped region close to the index of silica and prevent
guidance in that layer. This interesting fiber relies on several
strong narrow-band resonances in its transmission spectrum.
Experimental results show three types of resonances, whose
relative sensitivities to strain, temperature and refractive index
are noticeably different.
Figure 13. Square-lattice PCF (courtesy of F Benabid).
properties to the ones identified with the Kagome lattice fiber,

confirming that the new type of guidance mechanism reported
in [96] is not limited to Kagome-structured fiber and can be
extended to alternative lattices. The light confinement is aided
by a low density of photonic states (DOPS) of the Kagome
structure. The reduced core-cladding field hybridization
implies a low light-in-glass fraction of the core mode across the
guided frequency range. This novel PCF type presents large
bandwidth and low dispersion, when compared with traditional
hollow-core PCFs.
Besides the three previously mentioned types of hollowcore PCFstraditional hollow-core PCF, Kagome fiber and
square lattice hollow-core PCFthere is at least one more
type, in which the cladding photonic crystal is composed of
a circular array of air holes [94]. The circular rings of the
holes are intended to behave as the low-index layers of a
Bragg reflector in the cladding. This type of PCF is made
from polymers and was fabricated using the drilling technique
rather than the stack-and-draw technique as well as most PCFs.
Its main application is the transmission of THz radiation [94].
Palka et al introduced the concept and fabricated the corering PCF in 2008 [93]. Its cross-section (figure 14) was
designed for applications in localization sensors. It comprises
6 or 7 rings of air holes, 2 or 3 rings of rods (SiO2 doped
with germanium) and a defect at the center (SiO2 core). Both
core defect and ring can guide light by modified TIR. As in
traditional index-guiding PCFs, it is possible to change the
effective refractive index of the photonic regions by means
of the hole diameter (d) to pitch () ratio. Theoretical
computation demonstrates that this PCF provides high velocity
difference between modes guided in the core and ring regions
of about 100 ns km1 [97]. As shown in figure 14, PCFs have
been manufactured that can transmit light in two independent
regions with measured attenuation as low as 13 dB km1 in the
core region.
5.2. PCFs for mid- and far-infrared guidance

The spectral regions of middle- and far-infrared (mid-IR to
far-IR), from 2 to 10 m, are currently of growing interest
because the development of a new generation of laser sources
promises to open this spectral window for power delivery and
applications of fiber devices in the near future. Many gases
exhibit very strong molecular absorption at these wavelength
ranges, particularly in the wavelength range from 3 to 3.5 m
due to the CH4 strong absorption band around 3.3 m. For
example, in bulk silica the material loss above 3 m is greater
than 60 dB m1 [105] and would be even higher in a traditional
single-mode fiber. For practical purposes this means that
standard silica fibers are unusable in this wavelength range.
As a result, the research community has been searching for
useful fibers for the mid- and far-IR focused on other materials,
such as chalcogenide glasses [106]. PCF technology is also an
interesting solution for this problem [41, 91, 107109].
5. Novel potential applications of PCFs

5.1. PCF-based sensors
Fiber-optic sensors have been extensively explored in the
last few decades, because they can easily satisfy the market
13
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 14. Core-ring PCF: AFM image; near-field intensity in the core; near-field intensity in the ring; = 670 nm (axes in m) (courtesy
of N Palka and J Wojcik). Reproduced with permission from [93]. Copyright (2008) Springer.
and optical regimes, and offers significant scientific and

technological potential in many fields. However, most THz
systems are large and difficult to use because they rely on free
space to guide and manipulate the THz pulses. Moreover, the
lack of materials well suited for guided propagation at THz
frequencies has also been shown as a barrier for increasing
the number of THz applications. Materials such as glasses
and polymers that work properly at optical frequencies exhibit
unacceptably high absorption losses at THz frequencies.
Several kinds of THz waveguides have been proposed and
demonstrated, such as metallic waveguides, metallic wires,
plastic ribbons, dielectric fibers [111], porous fibers [112] and
PCFs [94, 113115]. The loss coefficients of THz waveguides
are still high. Wang et al reported the lowest loss of about
0.01 cm m1 [116], obtained from a 3 mm core diameter fiber at
158.51 m wavelength for hollow polycarbonate waveguides
with inner Cu coatings.
Cho et al [115] fabricated a highly birefringent plastic
index-guiding PCF, which exhibits a large birefringence of
2.1 102 . This birefringence is almost one order of
magnitude larger than that of previously reported PCFs [117].
This PCF is based on an elliptical core surrounded by a
triangular array of air holes. It was fabricated using high
density polyethylene tubes and solid filaments. Fibers like
these are interesting for applications in polarization-sensitive
devices such as polarization controllers, filters and isolators at
THz frequencies.
Recently, Ren et al have proposed a square lattice air core
low loss and polarization maintaining THz PCF [118]. As in
traditional hollow-core PCFs, this square lattice fiber offers
wider bandgaps than those achievable with triangular lattice
bandgap fibers. An asymmetric air core was used to remove
the degeneracy of the two orthogonal polarization modes and
achieve high birefringence. In this particular PCF, the bandgap
effect repels the modal power from the absorbent background
polymers, resulting in a remarkable suppression of absorption
loss of polymers by a factor of higher than 25. Furthermore,
the phase-index birefringence of the proposed THz fiber is in
the order of 103 .
In 2005, Pearce et al have proposed and numerically

analyzed a high-index (n > 2) hollow-core PCF with a low
level of surface, obtained by tuning the fiber wall thickness
[109]. They predicted power-in-air fractions of over 95% over
a fractional bandwidth of 5%, peaking at over 98%. The
proposed designs are appropriate for mid- to far-IR PCFs based
on high-index glasses, such as tellurites and chalcogenides.
During the same year, Shephard et al [108] fabricated, for
the first time, a fiber with bandgap guidance above 3 m in a
silica hollow-core PCF. The bandgap peak was at 3.14 m
with a typical attenuation of 2.6 dB m1 . Additionally,
they numerically suggested that by further optimization of the
fiber structure, it is possible to obtain loss below 1 dB m1 ,
extending the useful operating range of silica-based singlemode fibers. Their potential applications are chemical and
biological sensing applications.
Octagonal index-guiding PCFs made from silver
halide polycrystalline materials have shown interesting
characteristics for mid-IR applications [91]. Silver halide
fibers are highly transparent in the spectral range from 5 to
17 m. Moreover, they are flexible, nontoxic, nonhygroscopic
and biocompatible. Their refractive index decreases almost
linearly from 2.16 for pure AgBr to 1.98 for pure AgCl. The
fabricated PCFs presented a single-mode behavior at 10.6 mm
with low losses and a large mode diameter of 110 m.
CO2 lasers are usually applied as light sources for mid-IR
applications. However, it is also possible to use a broadband
SC source for these applications. As mentioned in section 2.1,
by using a sub-centimeter highly nonlinear tellurite PCF,
pumped at 1550 nm, a SC bandwidth of 4080 nm extending
from 789 to 4870 nm measured at 20 dB m below the peak
spectral power was demonstrated [41]. This tellurite PCF with
n = 2.0 is based on a wagon wheel design; a fiber of 120 m
outside diameter surrounds a microstructure that consists of six
very fine filaments 16 m long and 120 nm wide that support
a 2.5 m diameter core. It was fabricated by an extrusion
process from a bulk tellurite glass billet.
5.3. PCFs for terahertz guidance
Terahertz radiation, in the wavelength range from 10 m to
3 mm, has been employed in many applications in biology and
medical science, imaging, spectroscopy and communication
technology [110]. It bridges the gap between the microwave
5.4. PCFs with written gratings

A fiber long period grating (LPG) is an axially periodic
refractive index variation inscribed in the core of an optical
14
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
fiber. This inscription can be realized by ultraviolet irradiation

[119], by heating [120] or more recently by femtosecond light
pulses, primarily at 800 nm where the dominating inscription
mechanisms appear to be a combination of void creation,
material compaction and the photo-elastic effect due to thermal
stress [102]. As a consequence, the induced periodic refractive
index variation is the coupling of light from the fiber core to its
cladding modes at discrete wavelengths. The index modulation
within the single-mode fiber core varies in accordance with the
inscription method, but is normally in the range 104 0.1 and
has a period typically between 100 and 600 m.
The index modulation produces a set of attenuation bands
seen in the fiber transmission spectrum. The LPG attenuation
bands imply several potential applications in the field of
sensing, such as strain, temperature and bending. LPGs in
PCFs present very low temperature sensitivity, thus reducing
cross-sensitivity and resulting in a sensor with greater effective
resolution. Allsop et al demonstrated that the asymmetric
inscription produced LPG attenuation bands have a spectral
sensitivity to the orientation of the curvature, coupled with
low temperature sensitivity [102]; as well as a high dependence
upon the polarization state of the illuminating light.
LPGs written in large mode area PCFs have been exploited
for high-power [121] and sensitive biochemical applications
[122]. In the latter case, a layer of biomolecules was
immobilized on the sides of PCF holes and by observing the
shift in the resonant wavelength of a long-period grating it was
possible to measure the layer thickness. The thicknesses of a
monolayer of poly-L-lysine and double-stranded DNA were
measured using this device. Its sensitivity was approximately
1.4 nm/1 nm in terms of the shift in resonance wavelength in
nm per nm thickness of bimolecular layer.
Written gratings are not limited to the index-guiding PCFs.
Recently, an experimental reconstruction of bands of allsolid PBGFs using acoustic gratings has been observed [123].
Simulations and measurements showed that the bands of the
cladding are very sensitive to actual details of the structure.
The extreme sensitivity of these LPGs to the actual refractive
index profile of high-index inclusion could be the key to ultrasensitive LPG based sensors and widely tunable filters.
in a single body without using any other fibers or additional

optics. The beam expansion region and a focusing ball lens
were simultaneously formed along a small piece of PCF by
applying arc discharges from a conventional fusion splicer. A
femtosecond laser-based polishing system was used to form
a TIR surface for providing a side-viewing ability. The
measured working distance and transverse resolution of the
fabricated single-body lensed-PCF were 570 m and 6.8 m,
respectively. By using the proposed lensed-PCF probe, OCT
images of an in vitro biological sample were successfully
obtained. These PCF-based probes can be efficiently applied
to dynamic visualization of dividing single cells and to develop
new imaging devices to complement current noninvasive
imaging techniques and optical biopsy for cancer detection.
This technology will enable in vivo visualizations of functional
and morphological changes of tissue at the microscopic level
rather than direct observations with a traditional instrument at
the macroscopic level. The progress in fiber-optic nonlinear
optical imaging will propel imaging applications that require
both miniaturization and great functionality.
Additionally, a fractal-based PCF for ultra-high throughput optical probes has recently been demonstrated [128]. It is
considered a core component of all scanning near-field optical
microscopy (SNOM) systems. Optical measurements through
the fractal-PCF probes have shown superior power levels to
those of conventional SNOM probes. These fractal probes
enable the use of near-field microscopy for the examination
of biological processes in real time in addition to high speed
nano-engineering procedures.
5.6. PCF-based laser and amplifiers
Fiber lasers have been acting as a competitor to other solidstate lasers and gaining market share in different industry
applications, such as marking, printing, cutting and welding.
They rely on many advantages: low operating costs, nearly
diffraction-limited and high beam quality, high efficiency in a
maintenance-free format with a small footprint and low weight.
For kilowatt range applications, they provide an undisputable
beam quality compared with other laser systems. This
feature implies an enhancement of precision and processing
speeds for industrial materials processing systems, and makes
it possible to achieve extreme power levels by combining
multiple lasers [129].
One of the fastest growing, most promising PCF
applications is the development of high-power fiber laser and
amplifiers [129131]. Recent PCF developments have been
enabling novel and interesting ways to properly generate,
transform and deliver light, and, consequently, to improve
PCF-based laser and amplifier performance. This section aims
to review the progress and improvements provided by this PCFbased technology.
PCFs can be incorporated as linear or nonlinear intracavity
elements in fiber laser cavities with the advantages of providing
large-core-area single-mode performance, high numerical
aperture cladding, low bending loss and manageable dispersion
and nonlinearity. In this way, they might be used to manipulate
the spectral and temporal properties of the laser beams
5.5. PCF-based probes

Originally, lensed-fiber technologies for optical free-space
coupling were developed for the optical power coupling in
fiber communications and fiber sensor systems. Lensed
fibers are attractive due to their compactness, flexible design
parameters and simple fabrication process. Many types
of lensed fibers have been reported for optical free-space
forward interconnections, such as graded-index lensed fiber
[124], a hybrid segmented fiber [125] and a lensed PCF,
which have been shown to be remarkably useful for optical
imaging systems [126, 127]. They can be very interesting for
applications such as near-field scanning optical microscopy
and endoscopic OCT.
Choi et al reported the fabrication of a lensed-PCF
designed as a compact and effective side-viewing optical
imaging probe [127]. This PCF-based probe was implemented
15
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 15. PCF-based RL.
in a hydrogen-filled hollow-core PCF at pulse energies 100

times lower than previously possible [145]. Benabid et al have
also proposed compact, stable and efficient all-fiber gas cells
using hollow-core PCFs [69]. They have also been applied to
transmit high-power or high-energy laser beams [146], because
of their increased damage threshold and reduced nonlinear
response. Limpert et al [147] reported an 80 W doublecladding PCF-based laser with a slope efficiency of 78%. They
claim that no thermal limitations were found at that level and
proposed that such lasers should be scalable to the kilowatt
power level.
Random lasers (RLs) have several interesting features
that cannot be achieved with common bulk or fiber lasers,
such as simultaneous emission of several different wavelengths
at the same time and emission at new extremely low gain
lines [137, 138]. They also permit miniaturization and very
low cost. To make the random emission useful, some sort
of guiding mechanism that collects the stimulated emission is
desirable. Recently, we have proposed the use of a hollowcore PCF based on a large-pitch Kagome lattice [148], shown
in figure 15(a), to achieve a quasi-one-dimensional random
laser (1D-RL) emission. The proposed active medium is
approximately 5.0 mm of Kagome fiber filled with a mixture
of 250 nm sized rutile particles in a solution of rhodamine
6G and ethylene glycol, inserted using a syringe to press
the ultrasonically dispersed liquid into the core, leaving the
cladding filled with air. The fiber was transversally pumped
using the second harmonic of a Q-switched Nd : YAG laser
(532 nm, 4 ns, 10 Hz). The incident laser intensity was varied
from 1 to 4000 J using a mechanical attenuator. The obtained
results are shown in figure 15(b). The threshold pump energy
for the laser action of the RL can be reduced by at least a factor
of 3 by using the Kagome PCF. The effective guiding property
is demonstrated by a lower threshold of the high-gain scattering
media RL inside the HC-PCF when compared with bulk RL
emission inside a fluorescence cell. During the experiment,
a very strong and well-collimated yellow emission, around
570 nm, was observed.
(for example, pulse delivery, pulse compression, wavelength

conversion and SC generation).
The first PCF-based laser was reported by Wadsworth
et al in 2000 [132]. Due to their remarkable and unique
properties, PCFs can be used as a gain medium in lasers
and amplifiers and can be applied to their development in
diverse strategies: high numerical aperture index-guiding PCFbased lasers [133], double-cladding index-guiding PCF-based
lasers [134], all-solid PBGF lasers [135], gas-filled hollowcore-based lasers [136], hollow-core-based random fiber lasers
[137, 138], quantum dots PCF-based lasers [139], AsSe PCFbased index-guiding amplifiers [140] and Yb-doped indexguiding PCF-based amplifiers [141]. Particularly, Schmidt
et al have developed a 163 W fiber laser based on a ytterbiumdoped single-transverse-mode rod type PCF that combines
the advantages of low nonlinearity and intrinsic polarization
stability. Its mode field area of the fundamental mode is as
large as 2300 m2 [142].
Most PCF-based lasers are based on cladding-pumped
schemes [123, 133, 134], in which double-cladding PCFs with
high numerical aperture facilitate the conversion of multimode
light into a single-mode beam of high quality. Pump absorption
in double-cladding PCFs is typically very high and it is
speculated that this is caused by chaotic ray dynamics [143].
Mortensen has carried out a tough numerical investigation of
the wave chaos in the context of the pump absorption efficiency
in air-clad fibers in order to analyze the true role of the
geometry and possible mechanisms for the typical short pump
absorption length [144].
One of the most impressive advantages of using PCFs for
developing lasers is the propagation of high optical powers
(either cw or pulsed) with greatly reduced nonlinear response
and increased damage threshold. These optical properties can
be ensured by using hollow-core PCFs, in which the guided
modes index can be less than unity, enabling propagation in an
air core. Its main implication is that the fiber performance is no
longer intrinsically limited by the material properties of bulk
silica. A stimulated Raman threshold has been demonstrated
16
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Figure 16. (a) SEM image of PCF with a schematic of quantum dots; (b) photoluminescence spectrum obtained by pumping at 785 nm.
In the commercial context, the company Crystal Fiber

A/S produced the first commercial PCF-based all-fiber laser
[149]. This 10 3 22 cm3 product comprises a singlemode ytterbium-doped air-cladding PCF with a complete
Bragg cavity, a standard 7 : 1 pump combiner and a step-index
delivery fiber. The system was designed to be pumped with
seven fiber-coupled single-emitter diodes in 100 m 0.22-NA
fibers.
Highly doped PCFs have the potential for realizing short
length (a few centimeters) fiber-based amplifiers for short
pulses. Limpert et al [150] demonstrated a PCF-based
amplifier that provides pulses amplified to an average of 48 W
with a slope efficiency of 74%. This was obtained from a
mode-locked seed source supplied 10 ps pulses into a claddingpumped PCF with a 40 m single-mode core diameter. The
short amplifier length and large core diameter meant that even
at this level, the self-phase modulation in the amplifier was
moderate, enabling frequency doubling with 50% conversion
efficiency in a critically phase-matched bulk LBO crystal.
Brooks and Di Teodoro [141] have reported master
oscillatorfiber amplifier configurations in which a 40 m
diameter core double-cladding Yb-doped PCF was used to
amplify nanosecond-scale pulses from a Q-switched microchip
laser at approximately 1060 nm wavelength. The PCF has
been terminated by using beam-expanding endcaps in order
to reduce endface damage and allow endface polishing. The
PCF output was approximately 10 W average power and over
1.5 MW peak power. In an improved experiment [151], they
have added another amplification stage consisting of a doped
multimode fiber, which enabled peak powers of 4.5 MW.
Semiconductor nanocrystals or quantum dots [70] have
been attracting a lot of attention in the last few years,
because they are expected to realize high-performance optical
devices, for example cross-talk free semiconductor optical
amplifiers [152]. Particularly, colloidal quantum dots can
be applied to develop a light emitting source, since their
emission wavelengths are controlled by their size. Kawanishi
et al [139] reported an initial photoluminescence observation at
1550 nm from PbSe quantum dots placed in the core of a PBGF.
Photoluminescence around 1554 nm was observed from a 1 m
long PBGF with PbSe quantum dots inside the hollow core
pumped by a 1535 nm, 10 mW semiconductor laser. We have

fabricated a two-core PCF shown in figure 16(a). It is based on
air-cladding composed of 4 air holes with two different sizes.
A nitrogen-based system has been used to insert PbS quantum
dots in the regions shown in figure 16(a). These quantum
dots have been excited by evanescent field from a Ti : sapphire
laser at 785 nm with an average power of 485 mW. An example
of photoluminescence broadband spectrum is presented in
figure 16(b). It is approximately 700 nm wide, from 1000
to 1700 nm, which is much wider than previous published
results [139]. PCFs with quantum dots can be efficiently
applied to amplifier and sensor applications.
6. Conclusions and final remarks

Can the PCF technology make conventional optical fibers
obsolete? That is a very provocative question, which probably
has many answers. In any case, one thing can be easily and
categorically claimed: PCFs have been creating new ways of
thinking about light guidance in optical fibers, which goes
beyond TIR and happens not only in doped-silica cores, but
also in air, metals, liquids and even gases. Furthermore, their
unusual and remarkable optical properties have been extremely
interesting for many applications in diverse areas, such as
spectroscopy, metrology, biomedicine, tomography, imaging
and telecommunications. Finally, it is important to highlight
that new possibilities and applications of PCFs are still open.
Acknowledgments
This work was financially supported by FAPESP (Fundaca o de
Amparo a Pesquisa do Estado de Sao Paulo), under the CEPOF
and Kyatera Projects, and by CNPq under the Fotonicom
Project. The author would like to thank John Weiner from
USP-Sao Carlos, Brazil, F Couny from the University of Bath,
UK, and M Abbade from PUC-Campinas, Brazil for fruitful
discussions and A George from the University of Bath, UK, for
helping with fiber fabrication. Furthermore, the author wishes
to acknowledge the following researchers for providing him
with some PCF SEM images: L P Biro from the Research
17
Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401
Institute for Technical Physics and Materials Science

Hungary; G S Wiederhecker from Cornell UniversityUSA;
Jonathan Knight and F Benabid from the University of Bath
UK; C M B Cordeiro from UNICAMPBrazil; N Palka from
the Military University of Technology and J Wojcik from Maria
Curie-Sklodowska UniversityPoland.
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Recent progress and novel applications of photonic crystal fibers

Please note that terms and conditions apply.

REPORTS ON PROGRESS IN PHYSICS

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401 (21pp)

Recent progress and novel applications of

Received 9 June 2009, in final form 28 October 2009

4.4. Nonhexagonal-based PCFs

Jonathan Knight, responsible for the fabrication of the first

2010 IOP Publishing Ltd

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

dispersion and polarization effects. Some of these effects

Figure 1. Comparison between living photonic crystals and a PCF.

confined to the core, so the cladding index is only slightly lower

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

in their characterization, including the finite element methods

2. Light guidance in PCFs

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

Figure 3. Index-guiding PCF.

Light in an index-guiding PCFas expressed by the

of these devices is using high numerical aperture PCFs based

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

2.1.1. SC generation. SC generation is arguably one

both air-guided and surface modes, the fundamental mode

2.2. Hollow-core PCF

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

is depressed or enhanced with respect to the vacuum. By

Figure 4. Hybrid PCF.

cutoff conditions. Modal cutoff corresponds to the wavelength

2.3. All-solid PBGF

2.4. Hybrid PCF

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

Figure 5. Stack-and-draw PCF fabrication technique.

two thermally, chemically and optically compatible glasses

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

Figure 6. Photographs of stacking and preform preparation.

through which the vacuum can be applied during the fiber

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

Figure 7. Cane fabrication.

coiled on the drum. It can be changed throughout the drawing

4.1. Hybrid PCFs

4. New types of PCFs

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

Figure 8. Hybrid PCF.

Figure 9. Near-field measurements of hybrid PCFs.

The unique modal properties of hybrid PCFs make them

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

Figure 10. Nonlinear interaction between two bandgaps of a hybrid PCF.

Figure 11. PCF with lateral access (courtesy of C M B Cordeiro).

electrical tuning devices [75], all-optical modulators [76],

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

However, filling the micrometer air holes in long fiber

Figure 12. Metal-based PCF (courtesy of C M B Cordeiro).

4.3. Metal-based PCFs

4.4. Nonhexagonal-based PCFs

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

requirements of small size, low weight and low power

Figure 13. Square-lattice PCF (courtesy of F Benabid).

properties to the ones identified with the Kagome lattice fiber,

5.2. PCFs for mid- and far-infrared guidance

5. Novel potential applications of PCFs

Rep. Prog. Phys. 73 (2010) 024401

and optical regimes, and offers significant scientific and