Fabrication and characterization of active polymer optical fibers with a ring-doped structure.

• Polymer optical fibers with a ring-doped structure. • Light sources with tuning characteristics and optical sensors based on active polymer optical fibers. • Effects of dopant combinations, pumping conditions and light-propagation distance on the emission properties of polymer optical fibers doped with Lumogen Yellow 083 and Lumogen Red 305. • Time-resolved characterization of the doped fibers to obtain information about the energy transfer between the dopants. This paper employs the solution-doping technique for the fabrication of polymer optical fibers (POFs) doped with two perylene derivatives, Lumogen Yellow 083 and Lumogen Red 305, in different combinations. With the solution-doping technique is very easy to control the amount of dopant penetration into the core of non-doped uncladded fibers, allowing the fabrication of active POFs with a novel ring-doped structure. In addition to manufacturing the fibers, these have also been optically characterized. Specifically, the influence of the combination of dopants, pumping power and wavelength, as well as the light propagation distance, have been measured and analyzed. Furthermore, time-resolved emission characteristics have also been measured to determine the fluorescence lifetimes and to extract information about the energy transfer between the dopants. Finally, the aim of this work has been to investigate the performance of the aforementioned POFs for fluorescent lighting applications, with a special focus on tunable light sources, and also for sensing applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]