Fabrication, measurement, and alignment uniformity analysis of linear arrays of optical fibers

摘要

Techniques were developed for assembling a linear array of optical fibers between two silicon plates and polishing the fiber ends in a plane perpendicular to the fiber axis. The silicon plates contained etched V-grooves for capturing the fibers. Optical fibers from two sources were evaluated, along with silicon plates supplied by two sources. Most of the arrays were assembled by epoxy bonding, but some effort was made to form a eutectic bond using gold metallized fibers with gold-coated silicon plates. Measurements were made of the uniformity of spacing of the fiber mode field centers in the linear array. The work was performed to develop a multi-fiber linear array connector to couple optical signals to and from optoelectronic devices.