Chalcogenide Glasses

Compared to oxide-based glasses, vitreous materials involving chalcogens form a rather new family of glasses which have received attention, mainly because of their transmission in the mid-infrared. Indeed as low phonon compounds, these heavy-anion glasses allow the fabrication of moulded optics for infrared cameras as well as infrared fibres operating in a large spectral range. These waveguides, when correctly tapered, allows the development of a new gener ration of sensitive evanescent-wave optical sensors which have been used for biomedical applications. Because they contain heavy polarizable anions as well as lone-pair electrons, these glasses exhibit very large non-linear properties compared to silica and are candidates for fast optical switching and signal regeneration in telecom.