Mechanical fabrication of precision microlenses on optical fiber endfaces

Abstract

We present a purely mechanical means of producing highly concentric spherical lenses at the endfaces of optical fibers. The production process has two stages. First, conical lenses are produced in a grinding process that ensures excellent concentricity. Then, the conical lenses are transformed to spherical lenses using a novel process called loose abrasive blasting. The cone grinding is carried out on a microgrinding machine, which has a sophisticated control system that enables the production of precision conical lenses. The blasting is carried out on a diamond blasting machine. Plots showing automatic centering performance of the microgrinding machine and scanning electron microscopy images of the conical and spherical lenses are presented.