A Study on Cutting Glass Fibers by CO<sub>2</sub> Laser

Abstract

This The multi-mode fiber has been widely used in high data traffic applications since the transmitting rate of interface between data storages was larger than the capacity of fiber-optic communication with single mode fiber. The quality of end surface of fiber dominates the data transmitting efficiency. A good cutting end surface of single mode fiber can obtain by the traditional mechanical fiber cleaving methods. But, the multi-mode fiber has much larger core diameter than single mode fiber’s and the quality of cutting end surfaces which cut by the traditional mechanical fiber cleaving methods was not good enough. In the recent year, the pulse CO2 laser processing methods were introduced to cleave the fibers. In this research, a glass fiber laser cutting system was developed. The shapes of laser focusing spot and the concepts of laser cutting optical design were discussed in this paper. The experimental results show that the fiber cutting end surfaces with great quality, which were inspection by interferometer, can be obtained by the developed laser cutting system.