Abstract

In recent years, numerous researchers have introduced liquids into the capillaries of Photonic Crystal Fibres (PCF), and more specifically hollow core PCFs (HC-PFC), to investigate new applications ranging from bio-sensing to liquid crystal switching. Clearly the main advantages of this technique are the strong interaction between the optical field and samples in the capillaries (e.g. [1]), and the possibility of long interaction lengths. There are several methods of filling PCFs, but the one that has received most attention relies on capillary action with or without overpressure. Therefore, flow-rate equations can be used to determine whether a specified length of PCF will be completely filled, assuming a laminar flow [2]. In this paper, we show experimentally that significant delays beyond the predicted filling times occur in HC-PCFs, when filling their capillaries with pure water.

© 2009 IEEE