Mirror fibres could create photonic fabrics

MIT researchers have created high-performance mirrors in the shape of hair-like flexible fibres that could be woven into cloth or incorporated in paper. Applications may include fabrics with embedded "bar codes" that identify the wearer, potentially useful in the battle suits of future soldiers; or a lightweight cloth that reflects radiation, protecting from blasts of heat. These mirrors could also be used as filters for telecommunications applications.

The work builds on the omni-directional dielectric reflector (dubbed the "perfect mirror") created in 1998.

The "perfect mirror" combined the best characteristics of the familiar metallic mirror we gaze into with those of the dielectric mirror. The latter is a second type of mirror composed of alternating layers of non-metallic materials that allow much greater control over the mirror's reflectivity, but can only reflect light from a limited set of angles and are polarisation sensitive. Dielectric mirrors are most commonly used in high-performance applications such as in laser cavities and for adding and dropping channels in telecommunications systems.

MIT's perfect mirror can reflect light from all angles and polarisations, just like metallic mirrors, but unlike its metal counterpart can also be "tuned" to reflect certain wavelength ranges while transmitting others.

As a result, an array of mirror fibres or even a single fibre can be "tuned" to reflect light at different wavelengths to create a kind of optical bar code that could be woven into fabric or incorporated into a paper to, for example, identify the wearer or for authentication purposes. Fibres could also be designed to reflect thermal radiation over various ranges. The resulting fabric could then be cut into a protective suit.

The team first created a macroscopic cylinder, or preform, some 20 to 30 cm long by 25 mm in diameter. It contained the same 21 layers of dielectric materials surrounding a polymer core as the final fibres, but unlike the microscopic features of the ultimate fibres, each layer of the preform could be seen with the naked eye.

The preform was subsequently fed into a tube furnace that is part of an optical-fibre draw tower recently constructed in the Fink lab. From there, it was drawn into hundreds of meters of thread-like fibre with 21 microscopic layers. Each layer is only a few hundred nanometers thick, thus spanning 9 orders of dimensional magnitude in a single processing step.

Key to the success of the drawing process is the identification of a pair of materials which have substantially different indices of refraction yet similar thermo-mechanical properties, which enable them to be thermally processed at the same temperature.

For further information please contact Elizabeth Thomson at the MIT News Office.