SBIR-STTR Award

Fiber lasers are rapidly becoming an attractive laser source formanycommercial and military applications. All the common rareearth laser materials can be incorporated in a fiber laser. Ofparticular importance are fiber lasers and amplifiers that useerbium as the active dopant. These devices operate atwavelengths in the neighborhood of 1.55 microns and are commonlyused as in-line amplifiers in communications networks. Thisproposal addresses the scaling of erbium doped fiberamplifiersto achieve output powers in excess of 10 watts.An aerosoldeposition process in conjunction with Modified Chemical VaporDeposition (MCVD) will be used to fabricate several fiberpreforms. Rectangular double clad fibers will be drawn andcoated with a modified solgelbuffer yielding a double cladfiber. The fiber will be excited with a high brightness fibercoupled diode array, and laser parameters willbe measured. Thesedata will then be used to prepare a baseline design of the 10watt device to be fabricated in Phase II.