Femtosecond laser writing of Volume Bragg Gratings in silver-containing glasses for VIS-NIR applications

Volume Bragg Gratings (VBG) are inscribed in the bulk of non-conventional photosensitive glasses tailored with silver by means of femtosecond laser irradiation.
Thanks to intrinsic features of the spatial distribution of silver-sustained inscribed structures, it is possible to fabricate gratings with sub-wavelength periodic refractive index modulation. As a result, the achieved VBG target first-order Bragg reflection in the VIS - NIR spectral range. This work paves the way to manufacturing more complex optical devices, such as Waveguide Bragg Gratings.