Low Cost 1×2 Acrylic-based Plastic Optical Fiber Coupler with Hollow Taper Waveguide

摘要

A 1×2 Plastic optical fiber (POF) Y-coupler has been designed and fabricated using a simple acrylic (PMMA) mold insert. The device is composed of three segments: an input POF fiber, an intermediate hollow taper waveguide and output POF fibers. The acrylic mold insert has been fabricated using EGX-400 desktop engraver machine with a spindle speed of 15 K rpm and feed rate of 5 mm/sec. The engraved regions which is a form of U-groove allows 1 mm core step index PMMA POF fibers to be slotted into the mold insert. The short POF fibers at the input and output ends are slotted inside the mold insert before the interfaces of the taper waveguide. A top acrylic plate is then placed on top of the fabricated device and sealed. The final device has been tested for both splitter and combiner operations for an effective power of 1 mW. The device has an insertion loss of 10.48dB. In the splitter operation, the device has a splitting ratio of 52:48. In the combiner operation, the combined power is-11.15 dB for input power of -11.90 dB and -12.05 dB.