Active chalcogenide glass photonics and electro-optics for the mid-infrared

Both passive and active infrared transmitting materials have played an important role in aerospace and defence applications for decades. While there are often a range of materials that provide the properties needed for an individual application, there is no panacea amongst IR materials. The suitable semiconductors, crystals, hot press ceramics or CVD sulphides and selenides that are available have their problems. They can be extremely hygroscopic, toxic, expensive, fragile and increasingly difficult to source.Chalcogenide glasses provide a powerful material base for mid-IR photonic and electro-optical applications including optical fibre, active plasmonic waveguides, optically and electrically switchable thin films, metamaterials and solid state lasers, amongst other. Being in the core of rewritable DVDs and CDs this robust technology is now finding new applications provided by the combination of wide transmission band, high optical nonlinearity and the unique phase change switching functionality of advanced chalcogenide glasses.At the University of Southampton’s Optoelectronic Research Centre, chalcogenide materials in the form of optical fibres, bulk glass components, thin films, microsphere and most recently as plasmonic and metamaterials, have been studied since 1991. In this talk we describe our work with gallium and germanium sulphide based glasses and present three case studies; the potential for new solid state microsphere mid-IR lasers, improved low loss IR fibre for the 3-5 micron transmission window, robust, non-volatile phase change memory and also introduce their role in plasmonic and metamaterials.The exploitation of chalcogenide materials has evolved over the last two or three decades from a simple infrared transmitting bulk glass into a multifunctional optoelectronic material for the future. We hope that with this talk you will see our own role in this evolution and share in our excitement for these materials in the future