Opt. Mater. Express 6, 2040–2051 (2016)
Bioresorbable materials with high-quality optical properties could open the way to new capabilities in biosensing and phototherapy. Now, Edoardo Ceci-Ginistrelli and collaborators report a resorbable optical fibre based on phosphate glasses (PGs), regarded as promising biomaterials since the 1980s. The team considered PGs with varying molar concentrations of MgO as a substitute for CaO, and studied the response of the glasses in terms of refraction index and absorption coefficient over a wide wavelength range. They then carried out in vitro dissolution tests on fibres of differing composition: for fibres with concentrations of MgO less than 15 mol%, the diameter halved over 21 days and a weight loss of up to 70% of the initial value was observed over the same period. The authors manufactured an optical fibre with core and cladding made of PGs with MgO concentrations equal to 3 mol% and 8 mol%, respectively, to realize a fibre with a small numerical aperture and suitable dissolution kinetics. The attenuation loss of the fibre was measured to be 4.67 dB m−1 at 633 nm and 1.86 dB m−1 at 1,300 nm.
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