New Broad Band Rare-Earth-Doped Glasses For Optical Fiber Communications

Kigre has an idea and evidence for a new family of broadband glasses that break all of Zachariasen's standard accepted rules for glass formation. This family of glasses is based upon the extensive use of multiple glass formers such as SiO2, B2O3, La2O3and P2O5. By employing multiple glass formers in a laser glass, Kigre is able to expand the bandwidth without sacrificing cross section and gain. Normal glasses may be modified to expand bandwidth. However, in a normal glass this typically results in alowering of the material's gain. Gain and bandwidth are critically important properties for matierials used in broadband Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (WDM) and Dense-Wavelength-Division-Multiplexing (DWDM) optical communications systems.With bandwidthdemands doubling every 2 years, the 35nm conventional