Closely packed micro optical fiber arrays in laser scanning system

Abstract

Closely packed optical fiber arrays are used to increase the scanning speed in some laser scanning systems, but standard optical fibers are shown to be unsuitable for these systems. In this paper, a closely packing technique of micro optical fiber arrays is presented. The fabrication and properties of micro fibers, whose diameters range from several hundred nanometers to several microns, are introduced. These micro fibers are arranged side by side in V-shaped grooves, which are fabricated by photolithography and etching techniques on silicon substrate. Comparing to standard optical fiber arrays, such closely packed micro optical fiber arrays can eliminate the dark area among output light spots and can solve the problem of high accuracy demand of exposure location. This closely packing technique is also proved to be a feasible method in practical scanning systems.