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Updated: May 11, 2026

Design and Fabrication of an Optical Fiber Made of Water
Published on: November 8, 2018
Optical properties of liquids for fluidic optics
Peter Liebetraut1, Philipp Waibel, Phuong Ha Cu Nguyen
1Department of Microsystems Engineering, University of Freiburg Georges-Köhler-Allee 102, 79110 Freiburg, Germany.
Abstract:
We present the dispersion characteristics of 18 liquids and one resin, which are widely used as media for liquid lenses in adaptive and tunable optics and for index matching in spectrochemical analysis. These are measured by using a refractometer operating at six different wavelengths. We provide a short description of the measurement setup and present a detailed uncertainty analysis of the measurement system to provide a measure of the reliability of the data. We conclude with a catalog of refractive indices and Sellmeier coefficients of the measured liquids and show the location of the analyzed materials in an Abbe diagram.
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