Fabrication and characterization of Flat Fibers

This paper reports the fabrication and preliminary characterization of optical Flat Fibers. Unlike normal optical fibers which are basically cylindrical waveguides, Flat Fibers are ribbon-like planar samples, opening the possibility of extended length, fully flexible substrates. The fabrication of the Flat Fiber is performed by applying vacuum to a hollow silica preform during the fiber drawing process. Different vacuum settings are used in order to determine the optimum conditions. Other parameters that affect the fiber drawing process are preform feed speed and fiber drawing speed. Preliminary geometrical characterization results confirmed that the experiment (as a proof of principle) successfully produced Flat Fibers. Future work includes more detailed characterization such as determining the optical, mechanical and transmission characteristics of the Flat Fiber.