Fabrication of fiber collimate lens with liquid resin droplet

A new scheme for the fabrication of collimate lens for single mode fiber have been developed using liquid droplet of UV cured resin. A small amount of liquid resin is placed on the output surface of single mode fiber to form a collimate lens. The output beam from the fiber through this lens is monitored with a wave-front sensor. The centering error of the fiber position to the ferrule is adjusted by changing the tilt angle of the whole system to the gravity. The focus length is adjusted by the amount of resin to form a well-collimated beam when the resin is cured. A low cost plastic ferrule is developed using liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) with a large tolerance of fiber centering. The wave-front error of output beam is better than /spl lambda//4, and the coupling loss to a well-collimated beam is better than 0.9 dB without surface coating on the lens.