Machining of acrylic-based Y-branch plastic optical fiber coupler with suspended waveguide taper

Abstract

An acrylic-based Y-branch plastic optical fiber (POF) with a middle suspended waveguide taper has been developed. The suspended high index contrast waveguide taper structure has been designed in such a way that it is surrounded by air-cladding. Non-sequential ray tracing has been performed on the device giving an insertion loss of 4.68 dB and coupling ratio of 50: 50. The middle waveguide taper is constructed on the acrylic block itself without using any additional optical waveguiding medium injected into the engraved taper region. Fabrication of the devices is done by producing the device structures on an acrylic block using high speed computer numerical control (CNC) machining tool. Input and output POF fibers are inserted into this device structure in such a way that they are passively aligned to the middle waveguide taper structure. The device shows an insertion loss of 5.9 dB, excess loss of 2.9 dB and a splitting ratio of 50: 50.