The Laser Component and Fibres Group at The University of Hannover in Germany is working hard to develop better optical fiber components to improve our lives. Arden Photonics is always ready to support their innovations.

The Laser Component and Fibres Group had the challenge of developing small-diameter endoscopes that allow 3D imaging with subcellular resolution and is therefore suitable for minimally invasive surgery. This will enable applications of lensless fiber bundles for 3D imaging in the brain, for example. The group developed a fiber with a novel multicore structure, with 1,281 cores, each core being around 1.3 µm in diameter. Traditional multicore fiber bundles have periodic core layouts (top) and are quite sensitive to bending variations. The new design which the group is working on has a novel aperiodic multicore structure (bottom), which the group hopes will make it insensitive to bending.

When the group contacted Arden Photonics and asked us to try to measure the refractive index profile of the MCF, we were happy to help, and the results are shown below.