This paper proposed a low-cost and high-throughput method to fabricate lensed optical fibers. SU-8 Photoresist is used as the material for fabricating the proposed lens structure and is directly applied on two kinds of optical fiber tip, single mode glass fibers (O.D.=125 £gm) and plastic graded-index plastic fiber (O.D.=500 £gm), utilizing surface tension force to form a hemi-circular shape lens structure. The hemi-circular shape SU-8 lens is then electrostatically pulled to form non-spherical shape in an uniform electric field at a temperature higher than the glass temperature (Tg) of SU-8. Microlens with various radius of curvature can be easily produced by tuning the applied electric fields during the electrostatic pulling process. In addition, this study also measures the UV-Vis-NIR spectrum SU-8 photoresist to confirm the optical property of SU-8. Results indicate the SU-8 has high optical transmittance from the wavelength range of 380-1600 nm. SEM observation also indicates the fabricated SU-8 microlens has excellent surface smoothness which is essential for optical applications. A commercial optical simulation software of ZEMAX® is used to predict the light path of the fabricated lensed fiber. The numerical results show good agreement with the experimental test obtained by projecting laser light into a diluted fluorescence solution.
Furthermore, a Fabry-Perot laser chip with the wavelength of 1310 nm is used for light coupling test for the fabricated lensed fibers. Results show the coupling efficiency is up to 78% at working distance of 90 £gm while using the plastic lensed fiber (R =48 £gm), which is around 2 fold higher than that of a flat-end fiber. The coupling efficiency of glass lensed fiber (R =23 £gm) is up to 72% at working distance of 24 £gm, which is around 2.3 fold higher than that of a flat-end fiber. The proposed method is feasible of producing high-quality lensed optical fiber in a high throughput and low-cost way. The method proposed in the current study may give substantial impacts on fabricating lensed fiber in the future.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:NSYSU/oai:NSYSU:etd-0719108-165420 |
| Date | 19 July 2008 |
| Creators | Wu, Chun-Ching |
| Contributors | Chia-Yen Lee, Lung-Ming Fu, Chii-Rong Yang, Yih-Tun Tseng, Che-Hsin Lin |
| Publisher | NSYSU |
| Source Sets | NSYSU Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Archive |
| Language | Cholon |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.nsysu.edu.tw/ETD-db/ETD-search/view_etd?URN=etd-0719108-165420 |
| Rights | not_available, Copyright information available at source archive |
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