Improved polymer cladding for eye safer fiber lasers

Fiber lasers rely on clad pump architectures where double clad designs are used. Currently, polymers are used successfully as pump claddings on Yb-doped laser fibers. In order to transition to resonantly pumped fiber lasers at eye safer wavelengths, polymer pump claddings must have low absorption at those wavelengths. There is currently no suitable low index, low absorption, thermally stable, and high thermal conductivity polymer to act as a low-index coating. This work presents a new class of polymers, termed fluorinated polymer composites (FPCs), which possess improved thermal properties. The FPCs are fabricated by incorporating ceramic nanoparticles into fluorinated polymers. Ultimately, the FPCs could enable further use of fiber lasers at commonly used wavelengths, as well as at eye-safer wavelengths.