Development of Lead Free Crystal Glass Using Silica Sand from Gong Belibis Setiu, Terengganu

The silica sand deposit located at km 55 Jalan Pantai Kuala Terengganu-Kuala Besut in the District of Setiu, North Terengganu consists of loose sand of fine to coarse grain size which is developed over the raised beaches of marine origin. The underlying bedrock is believed to be either metasediment of Late Paleozoic age or intrusive granitic rocks. The average content of SiO2 is 99.3% while for the Fe2O3, Al2O3 and TiO2, their average content are 0.1%, 0.3% and 0.2% respectively. The screen analyses show that more than 90 percent of the silica sand is within 150 to 1,180 micron size range. The total area underlain by potential silica sand is about 1.9 million sq. metres with total measured reserve about 2.6 million tonnes. According to Malaysian Standard, MS 701：1981 and British Standard BS 2975：1988, silica sand for making crystal glass should meet the grade B specification in which the purity of silica sand is not less than 99.5% with only a small amount of iron oxide （0.015%）, alumina （0.05%）, chromium oxide （maximum 2 ppm） and other mineral oxides. In the production of crystal glass, a front loading furnace was used and maximum melting temperature was 1400 ℃. After melting process, physical evaluation on the crystal glass products were performed pertaining to complete accomplishment of melting such as existing of bubbles inside crystal glasses. In order to ensure that crystal glass quality meets the international standard, specification for crystal glass published by British standard BS 3828：1973 was taken as a guideline. Some of the parameters are density, surface hardness and refractive index. In general, silica sand from Gong Belibis, Setiu Terengganu is suitable as a raw material for making crystal glass product.

Photonic crystal fiber Mach-Zehnder interferometer with microholes ablated by a femtosecond laser for refractive index sensing

A new structure of the photonic crystal fiber（PCF）based Mach-Zednder interferometer（MZI）is fabricated and presented.The structure has microholes ablated by a femtosecond laser.The fringe visibility can be enhanced more than 10 dB compared with the interferometer without a microhole.The interferometer is characterized by sodium chloride solutions for refractive index（RI）sensing.The RI sensitivities are greatly increased by the hole fabrication since it directly changes the cladding modes of the PCF.For the interferometer sensor with two holes,the RI sensitivity is 157.74 nm/RIU,which is 5 times than that of the sensor without a microhole.Microholes ablation with a femtosecond laser on PCF can increase the sensor＇s sensitivity dramatically.Femtosecond laser has a wide application prospect in the field of performance improvement of the sensors.

Realization of absolute negative refraction index by a photonic crystal using anisotropic dielectric material

A method to realize absolute negative refraction index -1 with a two-dimensional （2D） photonic crystal is presented by introducing dielectric anisotropy in the photonic crystal material. The band structures of E-polarization mode and H-polarization mode can be adjusted by changing the parameters of materials. Thus the two modes with different polarizations have the same negative refraction index -1 for the same frequency. The results are demonstrated by numerical simulation based on the finite-difference time-domain （FDTD） method.

Characterization of external refractive index sensitivity of a photonic crystal fiber long-period grating

Long-period gratings （LPGs） are fabricated in a photonic crystal fiber （PCF） using the symmetric point- by-point CO2 laser irradiation method to explore the sensitivity characterization of PCF-LPG. Numerical sim- ulation is used to guide the investigation. It is found that the refractive index （RI） sensitivity of PCF-LPG depends on the coupled cladding modes as well as the coupled resonance wavelength （RW） of the LPG. Experimental studies show that the longer the RW, the higher the RI sensitivity for the same cladding mode. At similar RWs, the lower the cladding mode, the higher the RI sensitivity of PCF-LPG.

Intermodal interference based refractive index sensor employing elliptical core photonic crystal fiber

A refractive index(RI)sensor based on elliptical core photonic crystal fiber(EC-PCF)has been proposed.The asymmetric elliptical core introduces the polarization-dependent characteristics of the fiber core modes.The performances of intermodal interference between the intrinsic polarization fiber core modes are investigated by contrast in two interferometers based on the Mach-Zehnder(M-Z)and Sagnac interference model.In addition,the RI sensing characteristics of the two interferometers are studied by successively filling the three layers air holes closest to the elliptical core in the cladding.The results show that the M-Z interference between LP_(01)and LP_(11)mode in the same polarized direction is featured with the incremental RI sensing sensitivity as the decreasing interference length,and the infilled scope around the elliptical core has a weak correlation with the RI sensing sensitivity.Due to the high birefringence of LP11 mode,the Sagnac interferometer has better RI sensing performance,the maximum RI sensing sensitivity of 12000 nm/RIU is achieved under the innermost one layer air holes infilled with RI matching liquid of RI=1.39 at the pre-setting EC-PCF length of 12 cm,which is two orders of magnitude higher than the M-Z interferometer with the same fiber length.The series of theoretical optimized analysis would provide guidance for the applications in the field of biochemical sensing.