Laboratory of Materials Physics

Franklin & Marshall College

To contact us:

Phone: +1.717.358.4618

Fax: +1.717.358.4474

E-mail: ken.krebs@fandm.edu

General Information

This is the collaborative project with Scott Lacey. Our initial successes with using optically active sol-gel coatings on the microresonant cavities that Scott produces in his lab have encouraged us to move forward.

 

The idea of the project is to put the optical medium (the impurity doped coating) on the exterior of the optical cavity (the glass microresonator) and use the effinescent optical wave to pump the optically active layer, thus, turning the typical laser cavity design inside-out.

 

The high Q-factors of the resonators will offset the low optical absorption of the coatings producing a system with useful efficiency.

 

We also aim to use the optical resonance measurements to study the densification behavior of the sol-gel coatings as a function of heat treatments.

Dye impregnated gel coating on glass microsphere (100 micrometer diameter).

Optically Active Coatings

Highly functionalized microresonantors