CO2 Laser Assisted Fabrication of Micro-lensed Single-mode Optical Fiber

Abstract

This paper reports the fabrication of various micro-lensed single-mode optical fibers through the use of an enhanced peak power CO2 laser beam. The end faces of the optical fibers are exposed to the CO2 laser beam to form convex, concave, and conical shape optical fiber tips. Peak power of the CO2 laser beam was varied from 0.8 W to 1.5 W depending on the shape of the optical fiber tip. We also discover the dependence of the angle of the optical fiber tip on the rotation angle and the number of CO2 laser irradiations. The angle shows an increasing trend with both these parameters. We achieve a wide range of lenticular fibers with end face angle varying from 4.47 to 8.13. Furthermore, we investigate the emission pattern of light from the developed micro-lensed fibers. The proposed CO2 laser based optical fiber reshaping technique shows great consistency, and thus is suitable for commercial applications.