Structure, Properties, and Applications of Optical Glass and Fiber

Dear Colleagues,

Glassmakers throughout history have experimented with glass, a non-crystalline, often transparent amorphous solid, but it was not until the last century that optical glass and fiber began to have an unparalleled impact on human civilization through revolutionarily advancing the development of optical and optics technology. This was achieved through widespread technological use in, for example, optical imaging and displaying, solid-state and fiber lasers, optical amplifiers, fiber-optical telecommunication, sensing, and optics.

Optical glasses and fibers not only transmit light, but can amplify light and produce a novel light source that covers a wide spectral range from ultraviolet to infrared, depending on the glass host systems and fabrication techniques. The glass host systems include, but are not limited to, silica, silicate, borate, phosphate, fluorophosphate, fluoride, heavy metal oxide glasses (tellurite, germanate, gallate, bismuthate, etc.), and chalcogenide glass. The glass composition and structure co-determine the thermal, mechanical, physic-chemical, and optical properties (refractive index and dispersion, transmission window, optical absorption, stress/thermo/magneto/acousto-optic coefficients, etc.) of the produced glasses. For optical fibers, no matter step index or photonic crystal fiber, solid or hollow core fiber, their structural parameters and fabrication techniques play equally important roles in controlling their properties, e.g., zero dispersion and cutoff wavelength, attenuation, birefringence, and nonlinearity, etc. The very high flexibility in regulation of their performance through composition–structure tailoring makes optical glass fibers find increasingly wide applications in high-power laser producing, amplifying, transforming, and advanced fiber sensing, as well as generation of novel supercontinuum light sources, etc.

This Special Issue aims to present the latest works and findings in the research and development of optical glasses and fibers which give important contributions to the development of scientific research in the field of glass science and technology and fiber photonics. We invite a wide range of research on optical glasses and fibers: from fabrication, structure, and properties to their potential applications.

Within the scope of this Special Issue, it is our pleasure to invite you to submit original research papers, short communications, or state-of-the-art reviews. 

Prof. Dr. Pengfei Wang
Guest Editor

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