This webinar, hosted by the OSA Fiber Modeling and Fabrication Technical Group, will provide a brief history of optical fibers, common fiber materials and conventional manufacturing methods. Following this, newer considerations and applications, such as those relating to datacomms, high energy (fiber) lasers, and infrared fiber sources will be discussed, with a focus on enabling fiber materials and processing. Finally, the webinar will cover advances in multimaterial fibers including semiconductor optical fibers and hybrid glass/polymer/conductor fibers.

What You Will Learn:

• Methods by which optical fibers are made
• Conventional optical fiber materials
• How material composition influences fiber properties
• Advances in multimaterial fibers and their processing

Who Should Attend:

• Undergraduate, Masters, and PhD Students
• Researchers both in academics and industry

About the Presenter: John Ballato, Clemson University

John Ballato is a professor of materials science and engineering at Clemson University (Clemson, SC USA) where he holds the Sirrine Endowed Chair of Optical Fiber. A Fellow of the OSA, IEEE, AAAS, SPIE, and ACerS, Ballato has over 425 publications, 35 US and foreign patents, and is an elected member of the World Academy of Ceramics (limited to < 300 members world-wide) and the US National Academy of Inventors (NAI). His collaborative work on Anderson localizing optical fiber was selected as one of the Top Ten Breakthroughs of 2014 by Physics World (Institute of Physics, IoP).