Vanmol Koen, Baghdasaryan Tigran, Vermeulen Nathalie, Saurav Kumar, Watté Jan, Thienpont Hugo, Van Erps Jürgen
Opt Express. 2020 Nov 23;28(24):36147-36158. doi: 10.1364/OE.409148.
We present a design and fabrication approach for 3D printed polymer microstructured optical fiber tapers on standard single-mode glass fibers for efficient and compact mode-field conversion. This paves the way towards complex functionalized fiber tips for various applications, like sensors and beam shaping components, currently limited by the mode-field size and distribution of standard optical fibers. In this paper, we demonstrate the potential of mode-field converting tapers for relaxing the misalignment tolerance in fiber-to-fiber connections and maximizing the coupling efficiency in fiber-to-chip connections. We demonstrate a mode-field diameter expansion ratio of 1.7 and reduction ratio of 3 and show that our microstructured tapers achieve a comparable performance in coupling efficiency as their step-index counterparts, while providing greater robustness.
我们展示了一种在标准单模玻璃纤维上3D打印聚合物微结构光纤锥的设计与制造方法，用于高效且紧凑的模场转换。这为各种应用中复杂的功能化光纤尖端铺平了道路，例如传感器和光束整形组件，目前这些应用受限于标准光纤的模场尺寸和分布。在本文中，我们展示了模场转换锥在放宽光纤到光纤连接中的对准公差以及最大化光纤到芯片连接中的耦合效率方面的潜力。我们展示了1.7的模场直径扩展比和3的缩减比，并表明我们的微结构锥在耦合效率方面与阶跃折射率锥具有相当的性能，同时具有更高的稳健性。
