title: Optical and electrical characterizations of multifunctional silver phosphate glass and polymer-based optical fibers.
abstract: In recent years, the fabrication of multifunctional fibers has expanded for multiple applications that require the transmission of both light and electricity. Fibers featuring these two properties are usually composed either of a single material that supports the different characteristics or of a combination of different materials. In this work, we fabricated (i) novel single-core step-index optical fibers made of electrically conductive AgI-AgPO3-WO3glass and (ii) novel multimaterial fibers with different designs made of AgI-AgPO3-WO3glass and optically transparent polycarbonate and poly (methyl methacrylate) polymers. The multifunctional fibers produced show light transmission over a wide range of wavelengths from 500 to 1000 nm for the single-core fibers and from 400 to 1000 nm for the multimaterial fibers. Furthermore, these fibers showed excellent electrical conductivity with values ranging between 10-3and 10-1S·cm-1at room temperature within the range of AC frequencies from 1 Hz to 1 MHz. Multimodal taper-tipped fibre microprobes were then fabricated and were characterized. This advanced design could provide promising tools for in vivo electrophysiological experiments that require light delivery through an optical core in addition to neuronal activity recording.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Université Laval, 1045, av. de la Médecine, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada.|Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Université Laval, 2375, rue de la Terrasse, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6 Canada.
authors.forename: Maxime
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rioux
authors.affiliation: Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Université Laval, 2375, rue de la Terrasse, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6 Canada.
authors.forename: Yannick
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Ledemi
authors.affiliation: Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Université Laval, 2375, rue de la Terrasse, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6 Canada.
authors.forename: Steeve
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Morency
authors.affiliation: Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Université Laval, 2375, rue de la Terrasse, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6 Canada.
authors.forename: Elton Soares
authors.initials: ES
authors.lastname: de Lima Filho
authors.affiliation: Center for Optics, Photonics and Lasers (COPL), Université Laval, 2375, rue de la Terrasse, Quebec, QC, G1V 0A6 Canada.
authors.forename: Younès
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Messaddeq