Optical fiber tapering method and apparatus thereof

Abstract

The invention discloses an optical fiber taper method and its device. The method divides a beam of laser light into two beams through seven steps and then heats the optical fiber bundle from both sides respectively, and controls the temperature of the heating area by adjusting the position of the field mirror. , the shape of the taper is controlled by image recognition, so that the shape of the optical fiber after coupling is uniform and the signal transmission is stable. Compared with the prior art, the present invention has the following advantages: compared with the prior art, the present invention can greatly improve the quality of optical fiber tapering, has the advantages of fast speed, good tapering effect, ultra-low optical loss, and doubled product qualification rate. The high-precision splitting ratio is realized, and 1×N optical splitters and fiber combiners can be manufactured without introducing impurities into the coupled optical fibers.

Description

technical field [0001] The invention relates to the field of optical fiber communication, in particular to a method and a device for tapering an optical fiber. Background technique [0002] Optical fiber tapering is to place multiple bare optical fibers with the coating removed side by side into a bundle, and then use a tapering machine to couple the fibers together. The tapered optical fiber bundle is also called optical splitter or beam combiner, which is widely used in optical communication industry and fiber laser transmitter. The core difficulty of tapering is how to perfectly fuse and couple multiple optical fibers together to form an ideal optical splitter. At present, most tapering machines use oxyhydrogen flame as a heat source to heat the coupling area, so that the optical fiber is melted to a certain extent before stretching. Electric heating is also used as a heat source, and some use a high-voltage discharge arc as a heat source. These three methods have thei...

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Problems solved by technology

These three methods have their own disadvantages. The hydrogen-oxygen flame method is difficult to control the flame temperature in the central area, and is prone to temperature drift

Furthermore, the hydrogen-oxygen flame heats the fiber bundle from above, which will cause a large temperature difference between the upper surface and the lower surface of the fiber bundle, resulting in uneven heating of the fiber, and finally resulting in a large difference in the optical splitting ratio of the coupler and a large optical loss.

The main disadvantage of the electric heating method is that there will be an oxide layer on the surface of the resistance material after long-term use, which will directly reduce the heating effect, and such a high temperature will cause the sublimation of the metal resistance material, causing metal impurities or carbon to mix into the coupling area

The main disadvantage of the high-voltage arc method is that the arc width is not enough and the arc stability is not good, it is difficult to control to an ideal state, it will cause uneven heating of the coupling area, and the metal electrode is prone to sublimation, and metal impurities or carbon are mixed into the coupling area

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