Optical fibre technology revisited: towards nanostructured microoptics and optofluidic systems

Optical fibre technology is found to be established domain with well know application area. However it still offers new opportunities for microoptics, fibres and optofluidics.
A standard stack-and-draw fibre drawing technology commonly used for photonic crystal fibres development can be used for development of nanostructured gradient index (nGRIN) elements and fibres. nGRIN components are a new class of planar-surface micro-optical elements with arbitrary effective refractive index distribution. They can be developed with internal discrete nanostructure composed of two types of glasses. This technology can be used to develop nanostructured core fibres and a wide range of nanostructured gradient index micro-optical components as microlenses, axicons, diffractive optical elements and polarization-sensitive components
Photonic crystal fibres offers unique opportunities for dispersion engineering. A combination of these properties with various liquids brings new opportunities for nonlinear optics and optical sensing. A photonic crystal fibre with hollow core filled with highly nonlinear or active liquids can be considered as a new system for coherent supercontinuum generation. On the other hand optical fibres with integrated metal microwires can be used in biomedical applications, as microprobe for single cell electroporation and precision cancer treatment..