%0 Journal Article
%T Microstructures in Polymer Fibres for Optical Fibres, THz Waveguides, and Fibre-Based Metamaterials
%A Alexander Argyros
%J ISRN Optics
%D 2013
%R 10.1155/2013/785162
%X This paper reviews the topic of microstructured polymer fibres in the fields in which these have been utilised: microstructured optical fibres, terahertz waveguides, and fibre-drawn metamaterials. Microstructured polymer optical fibres were initially investigated in the context of photonic crystal fibre research, and several unique features arising from the combination of polymer and microstructure were identified. This lead to investigations in sensing, particularly strain sensing based on gratings, and short-distance data transmission. The same principles have been extended to waveguides at longer wavelengths, for terahertz frequencies, where microstructured polymer waveguides offer the possibility for low-loss flexible waveguides for this frequency region. Furthermore, the combination of microstructured polymer fibres and metals is being investigated in the fabrication of metamaterials, as a scalable method for their manufacture. This paper will review the materials and fabrication methods developed, past and current research in these three areas, and future directions of this fabrication platform. 1. Introduction Polymers have been investigated as a platform for the fabrication of microstructured optical fibres (MOFs) since 2001 [1¨C5] in the context of the photonic crystal fibre (PCF) research that had begun five years earlier [6¨C9]. The original work on PCF was based on silica fibres and the key innovation of using holes running the length of an optical fibre to control light in unprecedented ways [9]. The interest in using polymers arose from the difference in material properties between polymers and silica and the possibilities this entailed [1]. This initial work on microstructured polymer optical fibres (mPOFs) aimed to investigate the implications of these differences in material properties on the fabrication methods, fibre designs, optical properties, and potential applications of these fibres. These new fibres would be compared to the two related established areas of silica-based PCF, having the microstructure in common, and conventional polymer optical fibres (POFs) [10], having the material in common. The underlying theme was to identify situations where the combination of these two elements, the polymer and microstructure, was more beneficial than either element alone. Over the next decade, the work on mPOF matured, as with work on PCF in general. The fabrication techniques were formalised, and performance matching and exceeding those of commercial POF was achieved in comparable cases [11¨C13]. The limitations and possible applications
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn.optics/2013/785162/