Chalcogenide glass advanced for all-optical processing

By the 1990s, the only way to expand the band width of optical systems was to increase the capacity of transmission systems. But the introduction of wavelength multiplexing (WDM), researchers begun to look into processing signals optically. Thereby, more efforts were devoted to discovering optical materials that could overcome speed limitations associated with optoelectronic conversion and for the next generation of optical communication systems where operating bit rates of 100Gb/s of more is required to provide large ultrafast nonlinear response and low nonlinear absorption. Chalcogenide glasses planar that contains chalcogen elements sulfur, selenium and tellurium with combination of germanium, silicon, phosphorus, arsenic and antimony, meet the requirements. These all-optical signal processing material have been developed with a number of an intriguing results at the Australia's Center for Ultrahigh-bandwidth devices for optical systems- a consortium of researchers. Although chalcogenide glasses have some issues related to stability, aging and mechanically weaker than silica-based glasses, the material compositions are stable and certain compositions offer greater resistance to damages. The chalcogenides are more than suitable for making optical fibers and planar wave guides, as well.