Templated Chemically Deposited Semiconductor Optical Fiber Materials

Chemical deposition is a powerful technology for fabrication of planar microelectronics. Optical fibers are the dominant platform for telecommunications, and devices such as fiber lasers are forming the basis for new industries. High-pressure chemical vapor deposition (HPCVD) allows for conformal layers and void-free wires of precisely doped crystalline unary and compound semiconductors inside the micro-to-nanoscale-diameter pores of microstructured optical fibers (MOFs). Drawing the fibers to serve as templates into which these semiconductor structures can be fabricated allows for geometric design flexibility that is difficult to achieve with planar fabrication. Seamless coupling of semiconductor optoelectronic and photonic devices with existing fiber infrastructure thus becomes possible, facilitating all-fiber technological approaches. The deposition techniques also allow for a wider range of semiconductor materials compositions to be exploited than is possible by means of preform drawing. Gigahertz bandwidth junction–based fiber devices can be fabricated from doped crystalline semiconductors, for example. Deposition of amorphous hydrogenated silicon, which cannot be drawn, allows for the exploitation of strong nonlinear optical function in fibers. Finally, crystalline compound semiconductor fiber cores hold promise for high-power infrared light–guiding fiber devices and subwavelength-resolution, large-area infrared imaging.