Lensed plastic optical fiber employing concave end filled with high-index resin

Author

Sakata, Hajime ; Imada, Aya

Author_Institution

Canon Res. Center, Kanagawa, Japan

Volume

20

Issue

4

fYear

2002

fDate

4/1/2002 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

638

Lastpage

642

Abstract

We propose an optical coupling scheme that uses a fiber-end lens to achieve efficient coupling of the plastic optical fiber with a light source and with a detector. Transparent resin filled in the concave end of the fiber is fixed by surface tension to form a biconvex lens that is automatically positioned relative to the fiber core. A simple ray-matrix analysis shows that the lensed end yields a large coupling angle with a long working distance range compared to a flat-end fiber. The proposed lensed-end fibers are demonstrated in both input and output proofs of the experiment

Keywords

lenses; optical fibre couplers; optical polymers; ray tracing; refractive index; surface tension; automatically positioned lens; biconvex lens; coupling angle; fiber concave end; fiber core; fiber-end lens; flat-end fiber; high-index resin filled concave end; lensed end; lensed plastic optical fiber; lensed-end fibers; light detector; light source; optical coupling scheme; plastic optical fiber; ray-matrix analysis; surface tension; transparent resin filler; working distance range; Glass; Lenses; Light sources; Optical coupling; Optical fiber devices; Optical fibers; Plastics; Resins; Surface tension; Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Lightwave Technology, Journal of

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0733-8724

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/50.996584

Filename

996584