Specialty Optical Fibers Handbook

microtechnology and nanotechnology for optoelectronics and photonics [4–6]

and the demand for improved performance, wider applications, and higher

integration density, however, have spurred efforts for the miniaturization of

photonic devices and waveguides. A major step toward the miniaturization of

devices is reducing the diameter of the optical fiber or waveguide. Therefore, an

important motivation for fabricating optical-quality nanowires or nanofibers is

their potential usefulness as building blocks in future micrometer- or nanometer-

scale photonic devices and as tools for mesoscopic optics research.

There are several methods for fabricating one-dimensional (1D) optical

nanostructures, including bottom-up chemical growth and top-down photo or ...