Thermal characterizations and investigation of the drawing region in Ge-As-S glasses for IR optical fibers

Abstract Several glass compositions of the Ge-As-S ternary system were prepared and their thermal and physical properties were investigated as Tg, Td, theoretical drawing temperature Ts, viscous flow activation energy, density, visible and IR absorption coefficients. The measured values, which are in excellent agreement with the literature, were used to explore the drawing capability of the glass samples. In this work, we report wide range of Ge-As-S optical fiber compositions using the classical preform-to-fiber drawing technique. We show the possibility to obtain optical fibers with sulfur concentration ranging from 35 to 75%, and germanium concentration as high as 35%. In addition, based on the drawing tests we present a fiber drawing domain in the Ge-As-S ternary diagram. The attenuation losses measured at 1310 nm wavelength were between 8.4 and 12.3 dB/m.