5706 Vol. 40, No.

24 / December 15 2015 / Optics Letters Letter

Type IIa Bragg grating based ultra-short DBR

fiber laser with high temperature resistance
YANG RAN, FU-RONG FENG, YI-ZHI LIANG, LONG JIN, AND BAI-OU GUAN*
Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Optical Fiber Sensing and Communications, Institute of Photonics Technology, Jinan University,
Guangzhou 510632, China
*Corresponding author: tguanbo@jnu.edu.cn

Received 29 September 2015; revised 13 November 2015; accepted 13 November 2015; posted 16 November 2015 (Doc. ID 251004);
published 3 December 2015

We report on the fabrication of a thermally resistant ultra- high as 800°C, providing great potential applications of lasers
short distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) fiber laser based operating at high temperature [5]. However, maybe enslaved to
on the photo inscription of two wavelength-matched type the rigorous demanding of fiber photosensitivity [6] and the
IIa gratings in a thin-core Er-doped fiber. With continuous insufficient grating strength, the type IIa grating can only be
UV exposure, each Bragg reflector initially grows as a type I applied as the low reflector, which is in conjunction with a type
grating, followed by decay in strength, and then re-grows I chirped FBG for realizing the large range wavelength tunable
as a type IIa grating with enhanced thermal resistance. laser through temperature [7]. In this Letter, we demonstrate a
The DBR laser, with an entire length of 13 mm, can stably thermally resistant DBR fiber laser based on a pair of type IIa
operate at 600°C with single longitude mode, which pro- gratings directly formed in Er-doped fiber with high reflectivity.
vides potential applications in high temperature environ-
The abnormal spectral evolution characteristic of the type IIa
ments. © 2015 Optical Society of America
grating in Er-doped fiber is discussed. The entire laser length,
OCIS codes: (060.3738) Fiber Bragg gratings, photosensitivity; including the two type IIa gratings, is only 13 mm. The laser
(060.3510) Lasers, fiber; (120.6780) Temperature. can stably operate at 600°C. This Letter provides an efficient
way for the fabrication of compact DBR lasers with high ther-
http://dx.doi.org/10.1364/OL.40.005706
mal resistance.
A 193 nm ArF excimer laser is used for the fabrication of type
II gratings. The repetition rate of the laser output is maintained
A distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) fiber laser is a key compo- at 200 Hz. Focused by a cylindrical lens, a 120 mJ∕cm2 UV
nent in fiber sensing technology due to its compact size, multi- energy density per pulse is incident upon the fiber. The grating
plexing capability, and high sensing resolution, as well as high length is 3 mm, determined by the laser beam aperture. A stan-
signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, an ordinary DBR laser dard phase mask with the pitch of 1067.17 nm and the effective
sensor can hardly survive at high temperature because of the length of 25 mm is applied in front of the fiber to create a peri-
thermal decay of the Bragg reflectors. Efforts have been made odic modulation to the fiber core. The diffraction efficiencies of
on fabrication of fiber Bragg grating (FBG) reflectors with high the phase mask are ∼39% at
1st and <2% at zeroth orders,
thermal resistance. For instance, Lai et al. have fabricated type respectively. Higher-order diffractions can also contribute to the
II damage gratings in Er/Yb co-doped phosphosilicate fibers by spatial index modulation pattern, as will be illustrated in the
use of a femtosecond laser and formed a DBR laser with a following text, but their fractions are not provided by the manu-
length of 31 mm which can operate at 600°C [1]. Shen et al. facture. The fiber is put close to the phase mask. A broadband
have spliced two type I gratings formed in Bi-Ge co-doped fi- source with a wavelength range of 1500–1600 nm and average
bers to a piece of active fiber to compose a DBR laser with power density of −15 dBm∕nm, and a Yokogawa 6370°C op-
resistance at 400°C [2]. Guan et al. have fabricated DBR lasers tical spectrum analyzer (OSA) with resolution of 0.02 nm are
by directly inscribing highly saturated Bragg gratings in a Er/Yb used to monitor the grating transmission spectrum. The active
co-doped fiber, which can stably operate at 500°C [3]. To fiber used here is photosensitive Er-doped fiber (M-5, Fibercore,
further improve the thermal resistance, regenerated gratings Ltd.) which has a core diameter of 3 μm and cladding diameter
have been fabricated for the formation of a DBR laser that can of 125 μm. The peak absorption at 980 nm is about 5 dB∕m.
survive at 750°C [4]. However, a long active fiber (200 mm) is The numerical aperture (NA) is as high as 0.24, as a result of the
needed to provide sufficient gain for laser output due to the low high germanium dopant concentration in the core. The cutoff
grating strength. wavelength is 915 nm. This fiber is selected to form type IIa
Type IIa Bragg gratings, which are created by introducing gratings due to its thin core with heavily germanium doping
negative index changes into the fiber core via postal exposing to [6,8]. Both ends of the fiber are fixed by fiber holders, and
type I gratings, can withstand environmental temperature as an axial tension of 0.2 N is applied during UV exposure.

0146-9592/15/245706-04$15/0$15.00 © 2015 Optical Society of America

 Letter Vol. 40, No. 24 / December 15 2015 / Optics Letters 5707

Figure 1 shows the recorded transmission spectra of the gra-

ting the during UV exposure for 8 min. Based on the spectral
evolution, the grating formation can be divided into three
stages. During type I stage, the reflectivity grows rapidly and
the Bragg wavelength redshifts with the accumulation of UV
exposure. The type I grating reaches saturated after 55-s expo-
sure, presenting a maximum reflectivity of 21 dB and a wave-
length shift of 0.5 nm. Subsequently, the grating comes to a
decay stage. The reflectivity decays, and the Bragg wavelength
continues moving toward a longer wavelength. It is worth not-
ing that another dip can be observed at the short wavelength
side and grows stronger during inscription. The decay stage
ends up with a depth of 4 dB and an additional wavelength
shift of 0.5 nm for the original transmission dip via another
90 s exposure. A new, stronger dip can be observed with a re-
flectivity of 10 dB. In the following stage, the original dip re-
grows with a blueshift, presenting type IIa grating formation. Fig. 2. Schematic of the grating structure forming mechanism.
However, the shorter-wavelength dip also grows in strength,
but its dip wavelength hardly changes. Finally, the two dips
merge into one, and the grating reflectivity increases to 33 dB.
This stage lasts for ∼5 min . As a result, a relatively large difference of index changes prob-
Owning to the existence of the higher-order diffractions ably exists between the two structures during exposure, which is
(mainly
2 orders) from the phase mask, an interleaving index associated with the distance between the fiber core and the
modulation pattern is formed due to the multi-beam interfer- phase mask. The two dips are generated from these 2 s order
ence [9,10]. Figure 2 shows the schematic of index modulation harmonic gratings.
over fiber core. The amplitude of index modulation is not uni- To provide deeper insights, the variation of index modula-
form along the UV light incidence, but exists as a sinusoidal tion and average index of the two gratings, along with exposure,
variation. The period of the variation is defined as Talbot are shown in Fig. 3, which are extracted from the measured
length (Z T ), which is given by grating transmission spectrum from Fig. 2. We define the
longer wavelength dip as Grating 1 which denotes the larger
2π
Z T m; n  pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi ; (1) amplitude of index change and the shorter wavelength as
k − m G − k 2 − n2 G 2
2 2 2
Grating 2. The core network of the fiber compresses with the
where m and n denote the interacting diffraction orders and UV exposing, resulting a positive index change at the modu-
m < n, G  2π∕Λpm , and k  2πnw ∕λw  are the wave- lation region of the fiber core. Owning to the intensity differ-
length numbers; nw  1.62 is the refractive index of the fiber ence of index changes, both the absolute index modulation
core at the incident UV wavelength λw of 193 nm. Λpm is the (jΔnmod j) and the average index change (Δnave ) in Grating 2
pitch of the phase mask. The ZT 1; 2 can be calculated to lag behind Grating 1, presenting the second harmonic reflec-
∼6.2 μm [11], which is double that of the fiber core diameter. tion dominated grating in the type I stage. There, as the modu-
There are two modulation structures interleaving along the lation of Grating 1 reaches the saturation with 4.4 × 10−4 ,
core axis with identical period Λpm . The intensity functions the modulation of Grating 2 is only 1.6 × 10−4. Hence, in the
imprinted in the two structures present π-phase differences. following stage, Grating 1 decays because the maximum index
change region is widened, but Grating 2 keeps growing because

Fig. 1. Spectral evolution during the inscription of type IIa grating Fig. 3. Index modulations and average index changes of the gratings
in photosensitive Er-doped fiber. versus 193 nm UV fluence.
 5708 Vol. 40, No. 24 / December 15 2015 / Optics Letters Letter

the photosensitivity in that region is not exhausted. Although

the reflectivity of Grating 1 is less than Grating 2 at the end of
decay stage, the (Δnave ) contrast between the gratings still exists
with ∼2 × 10−4 . In type IIa stage, owing to the core network’s
dilation, the average index change of Grating 1 negatively
changes with fluence accumulation, making the absolute index
modulation re-enlarged. Finally, Grating 1 is blended with
Grating 2 by a (Δnave ) of −4.4 × 10−4 . Contributed by both gra-
ting structures, the index modulation is enhanced to 6.1 × 10−4 ,
providing stronger reflectivity of the Bragg reflectors.
Because of the particular negative index change by the com-
pression and dilation of the core network, the type IIa grating
exhibits higher thermal resistance [12]. In the following, the
survival ability of the type IIa grating in the Er-doped fiber
at high temperature conditions is tested. The FBG is put into
a tube oven which can be operated from room temperature
to 1200°C. Figure 4 shows the recorded transmission spectrum
of the FBG from room temperature to 800°C. The result is
shown in Fig. 4. The grating does not decay under 600°C heat-
ing for 1 h. As the temperature increases to 700°C, the FBG
slightly decays in 1 h. Finally, as the temperature reaches
800°C, the reflectivity of type IIa FBG decreases sharply as time
elapses. But after 4 h, the grating is not completely erased,
which is in accordance with the previous works on 193 nm
laser-induced type IIa Bragg gratings [8,13,14].
Figure 5(a) shows the transmission spectrum of the Fabry– Fig. 5. (a) Spectrum of the F-P interference based on the type IIa
Perot cavity formed by a pair of type IIa gratings with total Bragg gratings. Inset: the high-resolution laser spectrum.
cavity length of 13 mm. The longitudinal mode space is (b) Photograph of the DBR laser.
0.1 nm. By launching the 980 nm pump light via a 980/
1550 nm WDM, a DBR laser can be obtained. The high re-
flectivity of the type IIa gratings guarantees the laser output At 600°C, we test it with a longer time of 2 h. Figure 6 shows
under that short cavity. The inset of Fig. 6 shows the laser out- that the center wavelength of the DBR laser linearly shifts
put spectrum measured by use of a high-resolution OSA with the temperature enhancement, presenting the sensitivity
(BOSA Lite, Aragon Photonics) with a resolution of 0.16 pm. of ∼12 pm∕°C, which is in agreement with [6]. The wave-
It can be clearly seen that the DBR laser is operated in single length stability at different temperatures is presented by error
longitude mode. Figure 5(b) shows the image of the type IIa bars. The standard deviations of center wavelengths at different
grating based DBR laser. Because the fluorescence in grating temperatures are below 0.02, showing great wavelength stabil-
regions is much weaker [15], only the blank region between ity. Except for 300°C, the standard deviation is relatively large
the gratings is obviously seen with the length of 7 mm. at ∼0.18, which is probably due to the temperature perturba-
Subsequently, the performance of the type IIa grating based tion of the tube oven. According to the inset of Fig. 6, in spite
DBR laser at different temperatures is tested. We recorded of a slight enhancement of the noise background with the
the laser output spectrum at the temperatures from 200°C to
600°C. The duration under the temperatures below 600°C
are set to 1 h after the stabilization of the laser wavelength.

Fig. 6. Center wavelength of the laser in response to the temper-

ature variation. Inset: the typical DBR laser output spectrum at differ-
Fig. 4. Temperature resistance of the type IIa FBG. ent temperatures.
 Letter Vol. 40, No. 24 / December 15 2015 / Optics Letters 5709

during the 700°C heating process which consumes the same

duration with the 600°C. Because the quality factor of the laser
cavity is sensitive to the strength of the reflectors, the laser out-
put power varies with the reflectivity changes of the gratings. As
the FBG decays, the quality factor is optimized at first provid-
ing a power improvement. Later on, the laser power decreases
with the further annealing of the reflectors, whose optical feed-
backs can no longer support the laser oscillation. Consequently,
it can be summarized that the type IIa DBR laser can be stably
operated at 600°C condition.
In conclusion, a high temperature resistant DBR fiber laser
based on a pair of type IIa Bragg gratings is demonstrated.
The strong negative index gratings are directly inscribed in
an Er-doped fiber of small core and high numerical aperture,
via a rollover evolution of three stages within 8 min. The ab-
normal double-dip phenomenon in type IIa grating formation
is also discussed. The laser is highly compact with an overall
length of 13 mm and can survive at 600°C.

Funding. Fundamental Research Funds for the Central

Universities of China; Guandong Natural Science
Foundation (2015A030313324); National Natural Science
Foundation of China (NSFC) (11374129, 61225023,
61405074); Planned Science and Technology Project of
Guangzhou (2012J5100028).
Fig. 7. (a) Laser output power stability at different temperatures.
(b) Laser output power deviation at 700°C. Inset: the type IIa
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