Low Loss Plastic Optical Fiber Coupler Incorporating a Polymer Tapering Waveguide Region

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed and demonstrated a low loss type plastic optical fiber(POF) coupler incorporating a polymer tapering waveguide region. To avoid leakage loss at the interfaces between the POF and the polymer waveguide, we employed two POF transition regions, in which the cross section of the POF is adiabatically converted from a circular to a rectangular shape without change of its cross-section area. The device was fabricated based on a injection mold made of a silicon rubber. The fabricated POF coupler showed 1.33 dB of excess loss and 2.2 dB of flatness.