Design, fabrication, and characterization of microstructured polymer optical fibers

DESIGN, FABRICATION, AND CHARACTERIZATION

OF

MICROSTRUCTURED POLYMER OPTICAL FIBERS

C.-W. Huang, M.-C. Ho, H. H. Chien*, K. J. Ma*,Z. P. Zheng., C. P.

Yu,

Graduate Institute of Electro-optical Engineering and Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University

No. I , Sec. 4, Roosevelt Rd., Taipei City, 106, Taiwan Tel: 886-2-2363525 1x223, E-mail: [email protected] 'Department of Mechanical Engineering, Chung-Hua University

No. 707, Sec. 2, WuFu Rd., Hsinchu, 300, Taiwan Tel: 886-3-5186448, E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract - Fabrication and characferiration of microstructured polymer optical fibers (MPOFs) are presented. The effects of drawing femperahrre and heating fime during the fabrication processes are studied.

Thefibers ahibif single-mode characteristics as predicted by numerical simulation.

SUMMARY

Silica-based photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) have been studied extensively since they were successfully fabricated. Compared to traditional optical fibers, PCFs have a lot of attractive features. For example, with proper air hole panem designs, the, dispersion, cut-off wavelength, numerical aperture, and nonlinear coefficients can be manipulated to certain desired values, which can not be easily achieved by traditional optical fibers. Recently, polymer-based PCFs, which are generally called microstructured optical polymer fibers (MPOFs), have been fabricated and studied. Compared to silica-based PCFs, MPOFs have advantages such as better mechanical flexibility and considerable choices of material that can be used. In addition, MPOFs can in principle be fabricated at a much lower cost and novel fundionalities can possibly be explored with new materials. We have successfully fabricated MPOFs using the stack-and-draw method. Drawing temperature is the most crucial parameter in the fabrication processes. At a relatively low temperature (<175OC), the ratio of air hole diameter d to the pitch A between the holes nearly remains the same. The.diameter d is in a range between 3.5 and 4.5 pm &d the pitch A is between 12 and 14 pm. The fraction of air present in the samples is in a range up to around 30%.,Increasing the fumacetemperature to over 175"C, the hole size is significantly reduced due

to the effect of strong surface tension. We have also measured the mode panem and loss~of the MPOF samples. Although the loss is preny.high at h=1.55 pm, we have conceptually demonstrated single-mode operation ofthe

MPOF even though it has a large core size. Further studies are needed to confirm the single-mode operation and

to understand the loss mechanism as well as other optical properties.

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0-7803-7766-41031'S17.00 02003 IEEE