Tapering Optical Fibers

EOP 542 L Electro Optic Laboratory Summer 2007 Group Members Wenzao Li Aronne Merrelli Sarah Petersen Xingjia Shang Instructor Dr. Andrew Sarangan

1 Abstract
Optical fibers can be tapered in order to change their light coupling or light propagation properties. In this project, we explored a method to taper optical fibers using a combination of tension on the fiber and a heat source to partially melt the fiber cladding and core. We essentially used very simple, by-hand methods to attempt to taper the fiber. We measured the effects on the properties of the optical fiber, and characterized the physical structure of the tapered fibers by examining them with optical and electron beam microscopes.

2 Introduction
There are two primary methods for tapering optical fiber. The first involves careful machining methods to physically grind and polish the fiber to change its shape. This method will remove the cladding before the core of the fiber, which drastically changes the wave guiding property of the fiber. The second method involves partially melting the fiber and applying tensile force to stretch and thin the fiber. This method can taper the core and cladding evenly at the same time, which results in a taper that changes only the fiber diameter. The index of refraction variation perpendicular to the fiber axis should retain the same profile in this case. By tapering the end of a fiber, the effective NA can be increased. The angle of the taper has the effect of collimating the input light rays, such that their angles with respect to the optic axis tend to decrease as the ray propagates through the taper. In essence, the taper bends a light ray slightly outside the normal acceptance cone into a shallower angle that is within the acceptance cone. Therefore, a wider angle of light can be coupled into the fiber, and the price of shrinking the size of the entrance window of the fiber, which may make alignment more difficult. Tapering a fiber in the middle should affect the light guiding properties of the fiber. Since the number of modes that propagate through a fiber increases as the core diameter increases, a taper would tend to cause the fiber to drop the higher order modes out of the fiber. This mode selection would allow for selective beam attenuation the lower order modes would pass through the tapered region. In other specialized fibers, such as photonic crystal fibers, the taper can cause non-linear effects such as spectrum broadening and pulse compression with pulsed lasers. In this project, we attempted to use a heating-pulling method to taper silica fibers. We intended to taper the middle section of the fiber, in order to investigate the effects on the light guiding properties of the tapered fiber. We then planned on cleaving the fiber at a specific point along the taper. We would test the light coupling properties of the cleaved, tapered fiber by measuring the NA.

3 Procedure
We chose the multi-mode fiber (MMF) instead of single-mode fiber, because the MMF has a much larger diameter and it will be easier to taper without breaking. We tried using a disposable butane lighter and a propane torch as the heat source. After some initial tests we chose the lighter instead of the propane torch. The propane torch produced much more heat, but the flame was larger and created extra turbulent airflow around the fiber which tended to cause the fiber to "flutter". The lighter provided a more stable flame, and virtually no air flow so the heat applied to the fiber was easier to control. The end result was that the lighter was more likely to taper the fiber without breaking it.

First, we set up two translation stages with post holders on them. Then, we taped the fiber firmly on the post holders. We heated the middle of the fiber using the lighter (see Figure 1). After one to two minutes of heating, we started to pull the stage apart while heating the fiber. We tried both the internal flame (the central-lower bluish part of the flame) and the flame envelope (the larger yellowwhite part of the flame), and the result is only the internal flame can provide high enough temperature to taper the fiber.

Figure 1. Heating the fiber.

As we pulled apart the stages, it was important to press the fiber to the post holder, otherwise the fiber tended to slide through the tape so that it will not be tapered. And also, it was important to pull at a constant and slow speed, on the order of millimeter per second (see Figure 2). It was difficult to see the fiber begin to taper once we applied tension. At a certain point, the fiber would rapidly taper and bend. It is very difficult to anticipate this point and stop heating, so the fiber usually breaks. In two cases we successfully stopped heating at the right time. In both cases the fibers were tapered so thin that they broke when we took them off the posts.

Figure 2. Pulling while heating

We initially planned on investigating the wave guiding properties of a fiber with a tapered region in the middle, but we were unable to form a controlled taper in the middle of the fiber without breaking it. Therefore we were limited to investigating the effect on the Numerical Aperture (NA) at the tapered end. To measure the NA, we coupled light from a HeNe laser into the fiber. We prepared the opposite (un-tapered) end of the fiber in the standard manner by stripping and cleaving the fiber and aligning the fiber to the laser with the adjustable fiber positioner. The tapered end was installed in a rotating mount. By placing detector along the optic axis, we could then rotate the fiber with respect to the axis and measure the relative power with respect the rotation angle. Finally, we looked at the tapered end by both the optical microscope and the SEM to characterize the shape of the tapers. We used functions built into the microscopes' image processing software to measure the diameter of the tapered end.

4 Results and Analysis

Using the experimental setup described above, we were able to successfully taper several multimode fibers. While we could see some tapering of the fiber with the naked eye, we used an optical microscope and a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) to accurately measure the extent of our tapers. While the diameter of the untapered fiber was approximately 100m, in one case we found that the diameter of the tapered fiber (including cladding) was only 2.2m. Therefore, we were able to taper the fiber to only 2% of its original diameter. Figure 3 shows a tapered fiber magnified with an optical microscope, and Figure 4 shows another fiber through the SEM. The SEM view shows that the diameter changes very smoothly over a range of several millimeters. Unfortunately, most of our tapered fibers broke during the tapering process or during transport. The tapered end was usually too small in

diameter for the fiber cleaver, so the ends were mostly jagged. Figure 5 shows a close up view of the broken tapered end.

Figure 3. (top) Untapered fiber as seen through microscope. (bottom) Tapered fiber as seen through microscope.

Figure 4. Tapered fiber as seen by SEM.

Figure 5. Broken end of tapered fiber as seen by SEM.

To investigate the effect on the light coupling, we coupled light into both a tapered and an untapered fiber and compared the light distributions and the measured NA, following the procedure described above. Both fibers produced a similar light distribution when projected onto an observation screen. The overall light pattern is broad with a gradual fall off, and the small scale pattern shows speckle. The tapered fiber produced a qualitatively broader light distribution. Following the NA measurement procedure, we found that the Numerical Aperture of the tapered fiber was greater for the tapered fiber than for the untapered fiber. For each case, a plot of power as a function of angle was created and the NA was calculated (see Figures 6 and 7).
Normalized Power as a Function of Angle
1.2

Norm. Power (microW)

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0 -60 -40 -20 0 Angle (degre es) 20 40 60

Figure 6. Plot of normalized power as a function of incident angle for UNTAPERED fiber.

The acceptance angle is half the full width angle, and from the plot in Figure 6 we see that the acceptance angle is about = 25 for the untapered fiber. From equation 1, we can then calculate the Numerical Aperture of the fiber (NA = 0.42).
NA = n sin
Normalized Power as a Function of Angle for TAPERED fiber
1.2

Eq. 1

Power (microW)

0.8

0.6

0.4

0.2

0 -60 -40 -20 0 Angle (degrees) 20 40 60

Figure 7. Plot of normalized power as a function of incident angle for TAPERED fiber.

The data for the tapered fiber is shown in Figure 7. The acceptance angle is about = 37. Again applying equation 1, we calculate a Numerical Aperture of 0.60. The tapered fiber shows a roughly 50% increase in NA. As explained above, the end of the tapered fiber was broken instead of properly cleaved, so the results may be somewhat unreliable. However, the fact that the light pattern through the tapered fiber appeared relatively smooth (aside from the speckle), we believe the fracture was not significantly affecting the light coupling.

5 Conclusions
We had hoped to keep well tapered (very small core) fibers intact, but that proved exceedingly difficult. Only minimally tapered fibers did not break, and a minimal taper on a MMF does not produce much effect. We discovered that once the fiber core shrinks to a certain diameter, it becomes extremely fragile. We also found that once heating/pulling began, the fiber would remain untapered for several seconds up to a minute. Then it would suddenly taper down to a very small diameter in under a second. Lastly, for some trials, we found as we applied tension to the fiber, it slid through the tape which secured it to the translation stage. All of these difficulties made it extremely difficult to introduce a consistent taper into the fiber.

There are several improvements to our methods that would likely improve the repeatability of the tapering process. First, the inconsistent heating process could be improved by using a fixed and controlled heating element, such as a Bunsen burner or a small sized welding torch. Second, instead of applying the tension by hand with the micrometer stage, a motorized stage could be more effective. Ideally, a mechanism that could apply a specific amount of tension on the fiber would be superior. A controlled heat source and motorized base combined with a particular timing sequence (for example, heat for X seconds, then apply tension for Y seconds) could produce a consistent taper without breaking the fiber. At that point, the tapered section could be cleaved in a particular point in order to obtain a desired diameter or NA.