Acrylic-based 1x2 Y-Branch POF Coupler with High Index Contrast Waveguide Taper

摘要

An acrylic-based 1x2 Y-Branch POF coupler consists of input POF waveguide, a middle high index contrast waveguide taper and output POF waveguides has been developed. The optical device is based on a 1x2 Y-branch coupler design with a middle high index contrast waveguide taper. Device modeling has been performed using non-sequential ray tracing with an insertion loss of 4.68 dB and coupling ratio of 50:50. Low cost acrylic material has been used for the device substrate. This middle waveguide taper region 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 CNC machining tool. Input and output POF fibers are inserted in to this device structure in such a way that they are passively aligned to the middle waveguide taper structure. The measured insertion loss is 7.5 dB and with a splitting ratio of 50:50.