Fabrication of compact and precise fibre arrays

Novel techniques have been successfully used to fabricate square input and output arrays for a 64×64 optical crossbar switch. Precise fibre positioning was achieved by using location holes to position the fibres. Two techniques have been evaluated for generating these holes. These were excimer laser machining of hole arrays in Kevlar and wet-etching square hole arrays in silicon. The positional accuracy of both arrays appears adequate for the present crossbar switch. A hexagonal close packed array has also been fabricated and successfully used in a holographic star coupler. This array was constructed by using a channel slot approach. Two-dimensional square and hexagonal arrays of fibres have been constructed for the input and output ports of optical systems. The tolerances on the positions of the fibres within the arrays were sufficiently small to predict their successful performance within their respective optical devices