Four joint pro­jects of the Inno­va­tive Growth Core TOF are working on the deve­lo­p­ment of spe­cial opti­cal fibers for dif­fe­rent app­li­ca­ti­ons and markets.

›Robust Optical Fibers‹

Aim of the pro­ject is to deve­lop new mate­ri­als and tech­no­lo­gies for the manu­fac­tu­ring of robust opti­cal fibers on the basis of fused silica. The fibers are inten­ded to be sta­ble at high tem­pe­ra­tures (> 500 °C) and to resist che­mi­cal and mecha­ni­cal stress. Fields of app­li­ca­tion will be high tem­pe­ra­ture sen­sors (e.g. in power plants, deep geo­ther­mal), or che­mi­cally aggres­sive environments.

›Fiber Based Light Sources‹

This pro­ject focus­ses on the study and deve­lo­p­ment of broad band light sources as well as ultras­hort pulse fiber lasers of high mean power com­bi­ned with high pulse peak power at hig­hest pulse sta­bi­lity. Important app­li­ca­ti­ons of broad band light sources are for example fluo­re­scence spec­tro­scopy and mea­su­ring devices for com­mu­ni­ca­ti­ons engi­nee­ring. Ultras­hort pulse lasers will be deve­lo­ped for mate­ri­als pro­ces­sing and medi­cal applications.

›Fiber Based Sensor Systems‹

Focus of this pro­ject is the deve­lo­p­ment and tes­ting of fiber based sen­sor sys­tems on the basis of struc­tu­red multi core fibers for force or posi­tion sen­sors as well as spe­cial fibers for spec­tro­scopic ima­ging and gas sen­sors. Fields of app­li­ca­tion will be medi­cal tech­no­logy (mini­mally inva­sive devices) or ana­ly­tics (natu­ral gas technology).

›Development of luminous fiber based fabrics‹

This pro­ject con­cen­tra­tes on the inte­gra­tion of light emit­ting fibers into areal lumin­ous tex­tile fab­rics. Two dif­fe­rent fields of app­li­ca­tion are addres­sed: on the one hand, ambi­ent ligh­t­ing sys­tems for inte­rior use (e.g. vehi­cle inte­riors), on the other hand sys­tems for medi­cal tre­at­ments like light the­rapy. For both fields, the objec­tive is to deve­lop a weava­ble fiber, that emits light homo­ge­ne­ously over its surface.