CO2Laser 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 $CO_2$ laser beam. The end faces of the optical fibers are exposed to the $CO_2$ laser beam to form convex, concave, and conical shape optical fiber tips. Peak power of the $CO_2$ 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 $CO_2$ 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 $4.47^{\circ}$ to $8.13^{\circ}$ . Furthermore, we investigate the emission pattern of light from the developed micro-lensed fibers. The proposed $CO_2$ laser based optical fiber reshaping technique shows great consistency, and thus is suitable for commercial applications.