Optical fiber components have the potential of enabling interconnections in compact systems because they provide reliable and efficient manipulation of light in application fields such as telecommunication, sensing and high power. A variety of glasses and fiber components including tapers, tips, bundles and couplers are typically fabricated using hydrofluoric acidbased etching processes. However, such a standard approach has some limitations related to the generation of surface defects (e.g., roughness and microcracks), poor process control and high chemical disposal costs. We propose an innovative glass etching process based on molten salts that will overcome these limitations. Molten salts can be thermally activated to etch glass materials with high precision. Initial plant development and industrial manufacturing capabilities are demonstrated on a modular etching system through a research collaboration. This system also has the advantage of managing a set of fibers simultaneously with an automatic process control. First results of etched glasses and especially, biconical fiber tapers show extremely smooth surfaces, good homogeneity, high reproducibility and potential scalability for further processing of fiber couplers. With respect to the fabrication tolerances, a value of ± 1 μm over a length of 10 mm has been found for the case of etched multimode tapers. The use of molten salts as an etching tool can be extended to economically create microstructures in glass panels for optical or fluidic purposes.
Monitoring and controlling processes in industry, healthcare and environment encourage the demand and development of ultrasensitive sensors to detect physical and chemical analytes with very low concentrations. Optical methods based on resonant microstructures, that present high sensitivity, precision, selectivity, sensor lifetime and unit cost, are one of the most promising detection techniques. A fundamental limitation of optical microresonators is the realization of a reliable packaging approach that includes their readout element, e.g., tapered fibers. In this paper, the sensing response of packaged glass bottle microresonators have been demonstrated. Bottle-shaped structures support optical modes called whispering gallery modes along their curvature profile having a quality factor of 2.6 106 at 1550 nm in air. Two simple and robust packages fabricated by 3D printing and glass structuring methods were proposed for temperature and refractive index experiments. A temperature sensitivity of 9.9 pm/K in the range from 17.1°C to 22.5°C was obtained with a taper-coupled bottle system assembled into a plastic package. A similar value has been found when a bottle structure was mounted on a thermally-stable glass base and subjected to temperature changes from 18.6°C to 26.3°C. Both values were theoretically corroborated. For refractive index measurements, the fiber taper has been partially encapsulated employing a low refractive index glue. This provides a free-vibration package solution. Preliminary results shows a refractive index sensitivity of 13 nm/RIU under a constant temperature of 22°C. The proposed fiber-coupled bottle package enables new possibilities for the development of practical sensors.
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