Characterization of nanoparticles in glass and optical fibers

With the advent of nanotechnologies, numerous techniques have been developed to characterize isolated nanoparticles. However, in the context of this article, the nanoparticles of interest possess specific features that make their characterization complex: they are inserted in a glass matrix, may have a very wide size distribution (from a few nm to several hundred nm), may be amorphous and their composition may be close to that of the host glass. What's more, in the case of optical fibers, nanoparticles are only present in the core (with a diameter of the order of 10 µm), with a volume fraction typically of the order of 1%. Direct observation of nanoparticles therefore requires a specific preparation method combined with characterization techniques whose spatial resolution matches the size of the nanoparticles.

X-ray diffraction is a characterization technique commonly...