Development of soft-glasses photonic crystal fiber made by stacking-and-draw technique

We have been able to produce soft glass conventional core-clad and micro-structured fibers using rod-and-tube and stack-and-draw method respectively. The stack-and-draw technique shows several difficulties when used with soft glasses, that we managed to avoid using two different lead and alkaline glasses. Non commercial glasses and fibers were thermo-mechanically and optically characterized.