Specialised optical fibres have become essential optical components, designed to control and manipulate light guided within an optical network, enabling selective confinement, routing, dispersion or filtering to occur directly in the optical domain. Specialised optical fibres can be broadly classified as solid step or gradient index types, liquid core fibres and as photonic crystal or microstructure designs. In the former case, selective material doping of the fibres can afford unique properties that allow for optical amplification or photosensitivity. In the latter case, photonic crystal fibre allows for photon propagation in the most intricate of ways with great flexibility; we have far more control over the properties of photonic crystals than we do over the electronic properties of semiconductors. There are three key features that define the development of a specialised fibre i) the composition of the host material, ii) the waveguide design and iii) the use of specialised coatings. This conference aims to provide a forum for scientists and engineers - involved with the modelling, design, fabrication, device integration, and application of photonic crystal, microstructure and other specialty optical fibres - to present and share their latest research and findings. This conference will expand on the existing optical fibre innovations, detailing progress in the areas of fibre manufacture, devices, and applications that target the fields of optical communications, sensing and spectroscopy; and incorporating modelling of novel fibre geometries.

The conference program will consist of both oral and poster presentations. Papers are solicited on, but not limited to, the following topics: Materials, Processes and Fabrication Advances Advances in speciality and microstructure fibre manufacture based on, silica, chalcogenide and multi-component glasses, rare-earth doped fibres, single crystal material fibre and polymer optical fibres, as well as new and advanced coating materials. Theory and Modeling Modelling and simulation of linear and nonlinear characteristics of novel optical fibres, including modal analysis, birefringence, polarisation and dispersion properties, confinement and bending losses, evanescent coupling in multi-core fibre and fibre tapers. Test and Characterisation Methods Characterisation of optical fibres, e.g. measurements of fibre geometry, birefringence, dispersion, non-linearity and distributed measurements Optical Components, Sensors and Devices Speciality and microstructure fibre-based devices and their applications cover a broad spectrum of research areas that can include: Supercontinuum generation, wavelength conversion, fibre lasers and amplification, ultrahigh power and ultrashort pulse delivery, optical clocks, pulse shaping, dispersion compensation, microfluidic devices, liquid crystal fibres, and optical transport of microparticles. Optical sensors, e.g. chemical and biosensors, vectorial (multicore structures) and birefringent sensors (temperature and pressure), Bragg and long period grating sensors in specialised fibres. Near-field microscopy, spectroscopy of gases and liquids.