Nanofibers drawing and nanodevices assembly in poly(trimethylene terephthalate)

Abstract

We report flexible and elastic enough nanofibers with diameters down to 60 nm and lengths up to 500 mm, fabricated by one-step drawing process from molten poly(trimethylene terephthalate) (PTT), exhibiting high surface smoothness and length uniformity. A series of ultracompact devices (such as optical beam splitters, couplers, rings, resonators, and tweezer/scissor-shaped structures) and nanophotonic device arrays have been assembled by the PTT nanofibers. Quantitative studies demonstrate that the PTT nanofibers/nanofiber devices exhibit good guiding properties with low optical loss from visible to near infrared region. The results suggest that the PTT nanophotonic fibers/wires would be promising candidates in constructing miniaturized photonic devices and ultracompact photonic integrated circuits (PICs), and a one-step drawing as an alternative to the standard optical bench technique.