The Demo centre will firstly provide an introduction on the concepts behind planar waveguides, their fabrication and characterisation, the fiber gratings theory, fabrication techniques and applications of fiber gratings for sensing. These activities are related to the prototyping and characterization measurements of the Glass and Polymer Specialty Fibres and Fibre Devices Platform, with application in Telecom, Sensing, Light generation, and Light amplification.

The activity about fibre gratings and their application for sensing will focus on:

1. Fundamentals of fiber bragg gratings (FBG) and long period gratings (LPG); sensing techniques; grating based fiber laser.

2. Fabrication of fibre gratings.

3. Exemplative sensing applications: physical, (deformation, temperature) and bio-chemical parameters (refractive index change).

The activities about planar waveguides will focus on three main topics:

1. Ion-exchange as a technology for the fabrication of planar waveguides in glasses.

2. Coupling of light to guiding structures.

3. Characterisation of slab and channel waveguide structures (optical constants, propagation and coupling losses, near field, optical gain).