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| Abstract Title:
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| Femtosecond Laser Direct Writing in Chalcogenide Glasses
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| Graduate Student Presenter:
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Troy Anderson
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| Name of the Author(s) and Affiliation(s):
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Troy Anderson, UCF; Jiyeon Choi, UCF; Dr. Martin Richardson, UCF; Nathan Carlie, Clemson University; Dr. Laeticia Petit, Clemson University, Dr. Kathleen Richardson, Clemson University
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Femtosecond laser direct writing has been well established as a powerful and flexible method of fabricating 3-dimensional photonic structures within the volume amorphous materials such as silica, phosphate, and chalcogenide glasses. While much research has been done to understand and control the induced material modifications in these glasses, it is still difficult to predict a priori the response of an unstudied material to IR femtosecond irradiation. Therefore, the response of a new material of interest to IR femtosecond irradiation should be thoroughly characterized before optimized structures can be fabricated. Chalcogenide glasses are of particular interest due to their structural flexibility, large capacity for doping, high IR transparency, high optical nonlinearity, and high photosensitivity. We present in this poster a comprehensive study of the femtosecond laser induced material modifications of several Chalcogenide glasses in both bulk and thin film form. It has been found that exposure to near-IR femtosecond laser pulses induces a modification of the glass bond structure, which results in a modification of the refractive index and density. The surface profile of a 100 micron square irradiated surface region of Ge_{23}Sb_{7}S_{70} indicating a 350nm photo-expansion (density decrease) is shown in the figure. Furthermore, we show that the magnitude of the photo-induced response can be tuned through the laser irradiation conditions such as laser repetition rate, irradiance, and dose. Thus, the femtosecond direct laser writing technique can be used to fabricate structures with a large range of applications including optical waveguides, diffractive optical elements, and micro-fluidic structures for molecular sensing.
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