Multistage etching process for microscopically smooth tellurite glass surfaces in optical fibers

Bulk samples of tellurite glass with composition 75TeO(2)-20ZnO-5Na(2)O (TZN) were fabricated by melting and quenching techniques. In order to improve the surface quality of optical fiber preform made with this tellurite glass, the authors developed a multistage etching process. The relationship between successive etching treatments and roughness of the TZN glass surface was probed by using an atomic force microscope. The results demonstrate that this multistage etching method effectively improves this tellurite glass surface smoothness to a level comparable with that of a reference silica glass slide, and the corresponding chemical micromechanisms and fundamentals are discussed and confirmed by atomic force microscopy, potentially contributing to the development of multicomponent soft glass fibers and devices. (C) 2010 American Vacuum Society. [DOI: 10.1116/1.3437017]

This work was supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation of USA, DMR-0701526 “Glass Science, Processing and Optical Properties of Tellurite Fibers.” Aoxiang Lin’s work in China is being funded by grants No. 60907039, 60807034, and 10874239 from the National Natural Science Foundation of China and by the “Hundreds of Talents Programs” from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.