SBIR-STTR Award

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I research project will enable the fabrication of the next generation of polymer optical fibers. Currently micro-structured fibers made of silica are expensive. This high cost is limiting their use in many fields. Additionally, silica micro-structured fibers are fragile, difficult to finish, and not amenable to doping. Micro-structured fibers made of polymers on the other hand can be fabricated inexpensively and offer many other benefits when compared to silica such as flexibility, ruggedness, ease of finishing, ease of optical modification with dyes, chelates, nanoparticles, and quantum dots. This research will result in a flexible, economic process for fabricating various types of microstructured polymer optical fibers including large mode area, high numerical aperture, hollow core, dual clad, multi-core, as well as fibers with increased functionality such as fiber lasers, amplifiers, and sensing fibers. The realization of inexpensive fibers with such novel properties will lead to new product breakthroughs in telecommunications, defense, medicine, radiation detection, optical power delivery, etc. These new fibers will also give researchers new tools for developing the components to create a vast array of next generation optical components. The advent of inexpensive polymer micro-structured fibers will further accelerate this process and lead to new products that are not achievable with silica fibers

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). This Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II project will create innovations in the science and application of polymer doping, fiber drawing, and bundling technology. Research will be conducted to shrink fiber diameter limits to submicron dimensions, to dramatically reduce diameter fluctuations, to increase pixel density, to increase array size, to reduce manufacturing time, and to improve array quality. Experiments will be performed to develop novel methods of doping polymer with higher concentrations of quantum dots and other nanoparticles. Additionally, a ribbon array cutting machine and a microwell fabrication apparatus will be developed. The current glass-based fiber optic technology is expensive, has limited functionality, and cannot be used in some applications. The company's proposed polymer products will be better replacements for current glass products, not only because of lower fabrication costs, but because of the increased functionality polymers provide, as well. The innovations from this Phase II program will have significant scientific, technological, and social benefits. For example, in the fields of biological investigations, genomic studies, new pharmaceutical development, and detection of biological agents, polymer fiber optic arrays will increase the efficiency and integrity of high speed analyses for high throughput parallel experimentation. This program will also advance scientific understanding of the dynamics of Qdot and nanopartical dopants in polymers, providing fundamental benefits to the scientific literature for nonlinear optical polymer dynamics, as well as new methods to exploit quantum phenomena in mesoscopic devices. The commercialization of cost-effective, reliable microstructured fibers provides equipment manufacturers a pathway to supply new products of high impact to medical, information technology, and retail markets