Low Cost 1X2 Acrylic-based Plastic Optical Fiber Coupler with Hollow Taper Waveguide

Abstract

A 1 £ 2 Plastic optical flber (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 flber, an intermediate hollow taper waveguide and output POF flbers. The acrylic mold insert has been fabricated using EGX-400 desktop engraver machine with a spindle speed of 15Krpm and feed rate of 5mm/sec. The engraved regions which is a form of U-groove allows 1mm core step index PMMA POF flbers to be slotted into the mold insert. The short POF flbers 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 flnal device has been tested for both splitter and combiner operations for an efiective power of 1mW. 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 i11:15dB for input power of i11:90dB and i12:05dB.