ABSTRACT
While optical fibers display excellent performances in the infrared, visible and ultraviolet ranges remain poorly addressed by them. Obtaining better fibers for the short-wavelength range has been restricted, in all fiber optics, by scattering processes. In hollow-core fibers, the scattering loss arises from the core roughness and represents the limiting factor for loss reduction regardless of the cladding confinement power. Here, we report on the reduction of the core surface roughness of hollow-core fibers by modifying their fabrication technique. The effect of the modified process has been quantified and the results showed a root-mean-square surface roughness reduction from 0.40 to 0.15 nm. The improvement in the core surface entailed fibers with ultralow loss at short wavelengths. The results reveal this approach as a promising path for the development of hollow-core fibers with loss that can potentially be orders of magnitude lower than the ones achievable with silica-core counterparts.
ABSTRACT
In this paper, a novel platform for lab-in-fiber-based biosensors is studied. Hollow-core tube lattice fibers (HC-TLFs) are proposed as a label-free biosensor for the detection of DNA molecules. The particular light-guiding mechanism makes them a highly sensitive tool. Their transmission spectrum is featured by alternations of high and low transmittance at wavelength regions whose values depend on the thickness of the microstructured web composing the cladding around the hollow core. In order to achieve DNA detection by using these fibers, an internal chemical functionalization process of the fiber has been performed in five steps in order to link specific peptide nucleic acid (PNA) probes, then the functionalized fiber was used for a three-step assay. When a solution containing a particular DNA sequence is made to flow through the HC of the TLF in an 'optofluidic' format, a bio-layer is formed on the cladding surfaces causing a red-shift of the fiber transmission spectrum. By comparing the fiber transmission spectra before and after the flowing it is possible to identify the eventual formation of the layer and, therefore, the presence or not of a particular DNA sequence in the solution.
