Abstract
We report on a simple chemical etching method that enables nonlinear tapering of Polymer Optical Fiber (POF) tips to manufacture Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) fiber tips. We show that, counter-intuitively, nonlinear tapering can be achieved by first etching the core and not the cladding. The etching mechanism is modelled and etched tips are characterized both geometrically and optically in a fluorescence glucose sensor chemistry. A Zemax model of the CPC tipped sensor predicts an optimal improvement in light capturing efficiency of a factor of 3.96 compared to the conventional sensor with a plane-cut fiber tip. A batch of eight CPC fiber tips has been manufactured by the chemical etching method. The batch average showed an increase of a factor of 3.16, which is only 20% less than the predicted value. The method is reproducible and can be up-scaled for mass production.
Highlights
Optical fiber sensors based on Polymer Optical Fibers (POFs) have a number of advantages compared to sensors based on silica fibers, such as being flexible, durable, biocompatible, and biodegradable [1,2]
Etching of POFs, which are made of thermoplastic polymers, is fundamentally different, molecules are liberated
Etching of POFs, which are made of thermoplastic polymers, is because etching takes place by dissolution in a solvent where only long-range cohesive bonding fundamentally different, because etching takes place by dissolution in a solvent where only longbetween the polymer chains is broken, i.e., chemically unchanged polymer molecules are separated
Summary
Optical fiber sensors based on Polymer Optical Fibers (POFs) have a number of advantages compared to sensors based on silica fibers, such as being flexible, durable, biocompatible, and biodegradable [1,2]. These features make them suitable for biosensors [3,4,5,6,7,8] and chemical sensors [9,10,11,12]. This limitation can be overcome by increasing the numerical aperture of the fiber in order to collect more fluorescence
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