Microfiber as light source for exciting fluorescence in a polymer optical fiber

Abstract

We present a new technique for exciting and collecting fluorescence with all-fiber devices, consisting of two different tapered fibers, a microfiber used as illuminating source and a polymer optical fiber where a fluorophore has been deposited and where the fluorescence takes place. We depict the fabrication of the device, characterize its performance and show the feasibility of our approach, the good performance obtained and the possibility of using the flexibility of the illuminating fiber to increase this performance and the compactness of the device.