Advances in Materials Research for Optical Fiber Technology

Dear Colleagues,

Optical fibers are indispensable in modern life. From telecommunication, health monitoring, personalized medicine, materials processing, transportation, and energy to fiber-based lighting, fibers have entered almost every aspect of daily life. Using fiber technology allows for miniaturization and compactness of passive or active optical devices, whereby the interaction length between the fiber material and light can be tailored to be from only a few millimeters up to meters or even tens of kilometers. Recent developments in high-power laser applications require low-loss, extremely homogeneously doped fiber cores with finely tailored tuned refractive index profiles. New performance limits and functionalities required for novel strategies to adapt and widen optical fiber material synthesis and technology beyond the well-established standard silica procedures. As of today, emerging strategies include alternative core material doping approaches, e.g., with nanoparticles, non-silica matrixes, and adapted preform fabrication and drawing technologies complementing standard silica fiber technology.

The aim of this special issue is to bring together recent research trends of material synthesis and fiber fabrication technology and to highlight interdisciplinary research between materials chemistry, physics, and life science.

Dr. Katrin Wondraczek
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• material synthesis
• fiber preform technology
• fiber drawing
• material characterization
• optical characterization
• RE doping
• nanoparticle doping