Papers by Author: Massimo Brenci

Abstract: The possibility to confine the light in optical planar structures represented the milestone for the development of integrated optical devices in different application areas, such as communications and sensing. In particular, rare-earth (RE) doped planar waveguides demonstrated to be an interesting solution in the realization of integrated optical lasers and amplifiers suitable for the generation/regeneration of the signal in metropolitan and local area networks. Nowadays, although these devices are commercially available, the major contribution of the research consists in discovering and developing better combinations of materials and fabrication processes, in order to reduce the costs and increase the performance of the aforesaid devices. In this context glass-ceramic waveguides, activated by RE ions, seem to fully respond to these requests. The aim of this paper is to offer a comprehensive review on the main results obtained in our Labs in the field of glassceramics. Fabrication and characterization of different silicate glass-ceramic thin films, doped with different percentages of RE ions, will be presented and discussed. The interesting results obtained make these systems quite promising for development of high performance integrated optical amplifiers and lasers.

Abstract: We report on fabrication and characterization of two different opal-like structures: (i) crystal exhibiting mechanochromism, i.e. change of colour when subjected to mechanical stress, composed of closely packed colloidal polystyrene particles (CPCP) embedded in a poly-dimethylsiloxane (PDMS) elastomeric matrix; (ii) metallo-dielectric systems (MDCS), based on the realization of inverse silica opal and following attachment of gold nanoparticles on the silica network of the inverse colloidal structure. Optical measurements, performed on the two structures, have demonstrated that: (i) when an horizontal strain is applied on the CPCP embedded in PDMS, a blue shift of the diffraction peak occurs as a function of the applied strain and (ii) MDCS have unique optical properties that combine the localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) with the photonic band gap features of colloidal crystal structures. Finally, preliminary results on MDCS used as SERS substrate evidence a higher increase of the Raman signal in respect to that observed for others metallic structures.