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Buyer's Guide > Users > Product categories > photosensitive fibers

Buying Photosensitive Fibers

Top-level product category: icon fiber optics

More general product categories: fibers

Related product categories: fiber Bragg gratings, photosensitive materials

Photosensitive fibers have a core sensitive to ultraviolet light, allowing the writing of fiber Bragg gratings into the core. These gratings are used for various sensing and communication applications.

Making Good Purchase Decisions

As the most professional photonics purchasing portal, RP Photonics helps you to not only to find all relevant suppliers (not limited to our advertisers), but also to make good purchasing decisions.

NEW: Structured Decision Process

Purchasing involves a lot of responsibility. We recommend that you apply best practice by using the following structured process: Go through the following expandable sections, complete the form and finally come to a purchase decision. You can then print that to a PDF for documenting the process.

Our article on best practices for purchasing and another one explaining this tool give you valuable insights.

1. Understand the technical background

It is important to sufficiently understand the technology before buying.

Use the comprehensive learning resources of RP Photonics:

fiber Bragg gratings "Passive Fiber Optics"

If you need personal help, contact RP Photonics to get technical consultancy.

2. Define your requirements

It is essential to fully understand and clearly define your requirements before you buy.

We recommend that you develop a list of clear specifications according to your specific needs, against which you can later check the suitability of found product offers:

To help you, we have already listed some aspects we recommend you consider when buying photosensitive fibers. Of course, there may be other aspects that are relevant to your specific case.

This list is for your own preparation, and can later (possibly in modified form) be used for quotation requests to suppliers.

Otherwise, you will need to talk to your technical colleagues.

If you cannot sufficiently clarify your requirements, you may want to get technical consultancy from RP Photonics.

You find these buttons in the supplier list below or under "3. Find suitable suppliers".

3. Find suitable suppliers

We suggest three steps:

  • Below, you can find our list of suppliers for photosensitive fibers. Use the checkboxes to mark possibly suitable suppliers.
  • The selected suppliers will appear below this list, along with your list of specifications. You can then indicate which specifications they meet according to your research. (You should finalize your specifications before doing this.)
  • Based on the results, you can finally choose a supplier that is hopefully a good enough fit.

Selected suppliers:

(none so far)

Decision

The most suitable supplier you found:

Comments, e.g. reasons for your choice, or things which still need to be checked:

Suppliers for Photosensitive Fibers

3 suppliers for photosensitive fibers are listed in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide, out of which 2 present their product descriptions. Both manufacturers and distributors can be registered.

Suppliers with Advertising Package

presenting their product descriptions

Exail (formerly iXblue)
34, Rue de la Croix de Fer
78100 Saint Germain-en-Laye
France
Profile page  Website  

See us at LASER World of Photonics 2025 in Munich, June 24–27 (booth B2.341) and CLEO 2025 in Long Beach (CA), USA, May 4–9 (booth 225)!

photosensitive fibers

Exail (formerly iXblue) is offering different types of photosensitive single-mode fibers for fiber Bragg gratings:

  • IXF-PHO-CMF and IXF-PHO-CMF-PM are designed to suppress the cladding mode losses (CMF = Cladding Mode Free). The fibers have a mode field diameter similar to most standard SMF with a relatively low photosensitivity that can be enhanced with hydrogen loading. The main benefits are the cladding mode suppression and an extremely low birefringence and a low phase noise, making it suitable for gratings for compensation of large dispersion.
  • IXF-PHO-CMS is designed to adapt the cladding mode offset (CMS Cladding Mode Shifted) in order to optimize the channel spacing. This fiber has very high germanium core concentration, with low attenuation compared to exotic boron-doped core fibers, enabling high reflectivity gratings without hydrogen loading. CMS series will shift the cladding modes by up to 10 nm.

Our photosensitive fibers exhibit uniform and controlled photosensitivity to conventional UV radiation techniques. Similar fibers are available with polyimide coatings for harsh environments.

Benefits and features:

  • excellent cladding mode suppression
  • mode field diameter matched to transmission

Applications: fiber Bragg gratings, gain flattening filters, broadband filters, temperature and strain sensors.

Product-specific web page

Innovation in every fiber

Fibercore Limited
University Parkway
Chilworth Science Park
Southampton SO16 7QQ
United Kingdom
Profile page  Website  
photosensitive fibers

Fibercore’s photosensitive (PS) series of fibers have a high-germania and boron co-doped core composition, enabling high-reflectivity gratings to be written without the need to hydrogen-load. The mode field diameters of the boron co-doped fibers are engineered so gratings may be spliced into standard telecommunications, or pigtailing fiber with minimal excess loss.

Product-specific web page

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Other Suppliers

CorActive High-Tech Inc.
Canada
Profile page  Website  Get quotation

If any displayed information is incorrect (e.g., a listed supplier does not offer such products) or legally problematic, please notify RP Photonics so that the problem can be solved.


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