Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750

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Results in Physics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rinp

Review of optical fibers-introduction and applications in fiber lasers T

a b,c, b
Satish Addanki , I.S. Amiri , P. Yupapin
a Department of Railroad Integrated Systems, Woosong University, 171, Dongdaejeon-ro, Dong-gu, Daejeon-34606, Republic of Korea
b Computational Optics Research Group, Advanced Institute of Materials Science, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam
c Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam

ARTI CLE INF O AB STRACT

Keywords: The optical fibers which are considered as waveguides can be applied to light transmission applications. The core part of the
Optical communications optical fiber is surrounded by a glass or plastic layer called cladding which is characterized by the refractive index that is
Optical technology lower compared to the core refractive index. The total internal reflection phenomena are necessary for the fine confinements of
Optical devices the light within the waveguide. Basically, optical fibers can be categorized based on the structure, modes number, refractive
Fiber lasers
index profile, dispersion, signal processing ability, and po-larization. In this report, we focus on the first three common types
Waveguide
of optical fibers. As a common application of the fibers, these can be used in fiber lasers to create and amplify a narrow intense
Optical fibers
beam of coherent and monochromatic light. Fabrication of optical fiber involves three stages such as the preform formation.
Modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD) method is a known technique, which can be used to fabricate the optical fibers.
Optical fiber sensors are well known for wide range applications in optics and photonics. As a sensing application, optical
biosensors can be made based on the refractive index changes that used widely for detection of biomolecules in their natural
forms.

Introduction
Light plays an important role in everyday lives. Light is used in
optoelectronics and optical fiber telecommunication for data trans-mission,
from compact disc players where a laser reflecting off a CD transforms the
returning signal into music, to laser printers and digital cameras [1–5]. It
allows for computers and telephone lines to be con-nected to one another by
optical fiber cables. It found application in many areas such as optical fiber
lasers, optical fiber interferometers, sensors, and optical fiber modulators [6].
In medicine, light is used for image productions which are used in hospitals
and lasers that execute eye surgery [7]. Light extends through a far greater
spectrum than the human eye can see. In several applications such as optical
fiber trans-mission, the electromagnetic radiation ranges from 850 nm, 1310
nm, and 1550 nm, where it is called the near infrared range.
Essentially, light consists of a series of electromagnetic waves, with have
properties of light-particles. If light considered as a particle, it referred to a
stream of photons which are moving from one point to another [8]. Photons
are similar to electrons and these can be described as primary particles of
light. When light is applied to optical fiber transmission, the particle nature of
the light is of lesser importance compared to their wave nature. Generally,
light is understood to have possessed a dual nature. Electromagnetic spectrum
consists of
electromagnetic waves including frequencies below one hertz to above 1025
Hz, which are corresponding to wavelengths from thousands of km
(kilometers) down to an atomic nucleus size. Therefore, several separated
bands are included in the electromagnetic frequency range, where each
frequency band includes different electromagnetic waves which are
recognized by different names such as the radio waves, mi-crowaves,
infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays beginning from low frequencies
(longer wavelength) to high frequencies (shorter wave-length). Fig. 1 shows
the electromagnetic spectrum which allows us to locate the radiation used in
optical fiber transmission. The light is an electromagnetic radiation included
in the electromagnetic spectrum. The light refers to the visible range of the
electromagnetic spectrum that can be seen by the human eye [9]. The
wavelengths included in the visible range are between the 400–700 nm
(nanometers) which placed between the infrared and the ultraviolet frequency
bands. The corre-sponding frequency range for the visible range is 430–750
THz (ter-ahertz).
The optical fibers are waveguide utilized for light transmission. There are
three most important components of optical fibers such as the core which is
usually prepared from the glass. The core is surrounded by another glass or
plastic layer called cladding which is characterized by a lower refractive
index material compared to the core material.

Corresponding author at: Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam. E-mail
address: irajsadeghamiri@tdt.edu.vn (I.S. Amiri).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rinp.2018.07.028
Received 18 June 2018; Received in revised form 20 July 2018; Accepted 22 July 2018
Available online 29 July 2018
2211-3797/ © 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
S. Addanki et al.
Fig. 1. The electromagnetic spectrum, spectrum bands such as radio waves, microwaves, infrared, visible light, ultraviolet, X-rays are included in the electromagnetic spectrum.
Principle of operation
Optical fibers operate based on the principle of total internal re-flection
phenomenon that occurs at the interface between the core and the cladding
provided that the angle of the incident light inside the core is higher than the
angle called critical angle. Therefore the incident light will get reflected back
into the core and propagate along the fiber. If the light strikes the interface at
an angle greater than the critical angle, it will not pass via the other medium.
The reflected light at the interface is proportional to the angle of incidence as
well as the re-fractive indices of the core and cladding. The total internal
reflection phenomena are shown in Fig. 2.
As it can be seen from Fig. 2(a), the light encountering an interface
between two mediums with different refractive indices as glass and air. The
light will pass through the air medium if the angle of incident (θi) is smaller
than the critical angle (θc) and it will be refracted back into the same medium
as glass if θi > θc. Fig. 2(b) shows the same concept,
Fig. 2. Total internal reflection, (a) in glass and air mediums, (b) in fiber structure which has two glass mediums with different refractive indices.
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Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750
where the two glass mediums with different refractive indices in the fiber
structure. The core section with a higher refractive index will guide the light
through the total internal reflection phenomena, therefore the same concept is
governed as described in Fig. 2(a). Fibers usually have one core and one
cladding along with a protective coding. From Fig. 3, the optical fiber consists
of four parts namely, core, clad-ding, buffer and the jacket.
The core section has a cylindrical shape made of dielectric material
generally has a special refractive index. The core section is surrounded by the
cladding section which is made of glass or plastic with a lower refractive
index than the core section. The cladding section performs a few functions
such as reducing the loss of the light from the core into the surrounding air.
The cladding section is surrounded by an addi-tional elastic layer as buffer
made of plastic which protects the optical fiber from physical damage and
scattering losses caused by the micro bending. The last layer is the jacket
layer which can be used to re-cognize the fiber’s type. Most fibers are made of
quartz glass because of
S. Addanki et al.
Fig. 3. Structure of optical fiber including four sections as core, cladding, buffer, and
jacket.
its purity. Optical fibers are widely used in invoice transmission, data
transmission, and photonics due to its ability to transmit at speeds in excess of
10 GB per second. The applications may be found in the areas of
optoelectronics, sensors, micromachines, fine metals, ceramic pow-ders, and
protective coatings. In the optical fiber communication, op-tical fibers are
widely used, which allows communication over longer distances and at higher
rates than wired and wireless communications which use materials other than
optical fibers.
Optical fiber types
To understand the applications of optical fibers, it is important to study
their characteristic types. The optical fiber systems will be clas-sified with
regards to a specific application to which it is being sub-jected [10]. Basically,
optical fibers can be categorized based on the following aspects: (i) Structure:
That can be, cylindrical, birefringent, planar or strip, (ii) Modes number:
Multi-modes, and single-mode, (iii) Refractive index profile: step-index and
gradient-index fibers, (iv) Dis-persion: natural, dispersion, dispersion shifted,
reverse dispersion and dispersion winded fiber, (v) Based on signal processing
ability: passive data transmission and active-amplifier, (vi) Polarization:
classic, po-larization preserving, and polarizing fibers. In this report, we focus
on the first three common types of the optical fibers, which are classified as
followings.
Based on the structures given by the following details
i Cylindrical optical fiber
This is made up of the core, typically glass where light passes
Fig. 4. Dimensions of the single-mode and multi-mode fibers, the single-mode, and multi-mode fibers have core diameters of 9 μm and 50 μm respectively, where these have a cladding
diameter of 125 μm.
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Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750
through. This core is also surrounded by a cylindrical layer of material which
has a lower refractive index and is known as cladding. The re-fractive index
difference is 0.005. The function of the jacket is to protect the core [11].
ii Planar waveguide fiber
This type of fiber is made of the rectangular block containing three layers
as the base, light guide, and coating. The refractive index of the base and that
of the coating are lower than other layers.
Based on the mode number
i. Multi-mode fiber
This type of fiber is applicable to short distance communications such as
local area network systems and video surveillance [12]. It has a very large
core diameter of 50–62.5 μm. The large diameter of the core pushes the
impulse to pass along different optical routes in random mode, hence, the rays
move to touch the detector at dissimilar times. It causes temporary broadening
of the signal, hindering data transmission speed and effective broadcast
distance to about 200–500 m.
ii. Single-mode fiber
Single-mode fibers, on the other hand, are better used for longer
communication distances, which are appropriate for the long-distance
telephone as well as multi-channel TV transmission systems. Single-mode
fibers have small core diameters of 5 or 10 μm. The diameter of the cladding
in the multi-mode and single-mode fibers is 125 μm as shown in Fig. 4.
Due to the small size of the diameter of the core in single-mode fibers, the
propagation of the light takes place in the axis parallel to that of the fiber.
However, in the single-mode fibers, propagation of light is only possible if a
certain condition as v < 2.405 is satisfied [13]. v is normalized frequency and
it can be defined by the following equation (Eq. (1)).
2πa 2 2 (1)
v= n 1 −n2
λ0
where a is the fiber core diameter, λ0 is the light propagation wave-length, n 1
is the refractive index of the core and n 2 is the refractive index of the cladding
[14]. When the normalized frequency is high, the optical fiber works as a
multi-mode fiber [15]. The intermodal disper-sion is absence in single-mode
fibers, therefore, the light pulse reaches the end of the fiber with slight
distortion.
S. Addanki et al.
Fig. 5. Ytterbium-doped germanosilicate glass used in the fiber’s core, the cross-section
of the core versus the wavelength (nm).
Based on the refractive index profile
Classification of fibers based on the refractive index profile can also be
made. Here, fibers are classified into step and gradient index fibers. The step-
index and gradient index fibers have a core that is constant, and the refractive
index discontinuous at the interface between the cladding and the core. In the
gradient index fiber, the RI of the core is higher at the center of the core and
gradually decreases as the interface approaches.
Polarization maintaining fibers
Maintaining constant polarization of the light is necessary for many
applications such as fiber interferometers, fiber lasers, sensors, external fiber
modulators, integrated optical circuit coupling and coherent light
transmission. Polarization maintaining fiber is designed to propagate only one
polarization of the input light. It consists of a feature which cannot be seen in
another type of fiber. In addition to the core, two circles called stress rods are
found which create stress in the fiber core in which the transmission of only
one polarization is favored.
Even though it is possible to send light down a fiber, there are many
variables that come into play such as the variables that affect light
propagation through the fiber include fiber type, core size, numerical aperture,
refractive index, and doping. These variables contribute to extending the
range of applications for the light communications [16]. However, we strive
for single-mode fibers, where sending light down a single-mode fiber is
difficult as the light source is expensive. How can we strike a balance
between power, efficiency, and economy? Through experimentation, it was
discovered that changing the refractive index periodically along the length of
an optical fiber could cause reflections of the light. This creates a grating that
takes advantage of Bragg’s law to create a type of mirror (Eq. (2)).
2d sin θ = n λ
where d is defined as the grating period. By changing the intensity and the
grating period, the amount of the reflection for a particular wave-length can be
controlled. This quickly leads to the development of fiber lasers.
Based on the numbers of cladding or cores
Double-clad fiber (DCF) is consisting of three layers of materials instead
of the usual two which are subjected to single-clad fibers. In the DCFs the
core is surrounded by two claddings with different refractive indices. These
fibers are classified to two different types, where the first one can be made in
such a way the dispersion can be engineered and altered within the inner and
outer claddings, while the majority of the light can be guided within the core
section. Another type can be used for high power fiber lasers. In this case, the
core of the fiber is doped with active dopant materials, therefore these types of
fiber can be
Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750
utilized for both guiding of light and amplifying. The core has a highest
refractive index and the outer cladding has a lowest refractive index and it can
be made of materials such as polymers [17]. DCF features a single-mode core
and double cladding structures that allows both single-mode and multi-mode
light to propagate through the fiber. Triple-clad single-mode fibers have been
attracted because perfect transmission properties can be obtained by adjusting
the cladding parameters. Optical fibers consisting of multi-cores are new
approaches to engineer the fibers for high capacity transmission applications.
These types of fibers are functioning in both single and multiple modes and
can be made of several cores. Each of the fiber cores can act as a se-parate
waveguide in which the light can propagate independently [18]. The mode
coupling occurs between the cores if the distance between two cores is too
small. Even though in some situations this type of light coupling is desired,
but in many others, it is avoided or minimized by using large enough spacings
between the cores.
Fiber laser
The fiber laser can be based on Erbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA) or
Ytterbium-Doped Fiber Amplifier (YDFA). A laser is a device that creates and
amplifies a narrow intense beam of coherent, mono-chromatic light. A fiber
laser works by reflecting the light through an optical cavity so that a stream of
photons stimulates atoms that store and release light energy at different
wavelengths. There are two dif-ferent states for an atom as ground and
excited states. The ground state has the lowest energy and it is the most stable
state. In a laser, the atoms are excited in the laser cavity so that more of them
can be found in the higher energy levels. When an excited electron drops back
into a lower energy level, a photon of particular wavelength releases and
stimulate other electrons to emit more photons which are in phase [19]. On
the periodic table, these elements appeared in the lanthanide series Ytterbium
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( Yb) are the most common lasing atoms. The core of the fiber, therefore, can
be doped to control the refractive index and pho-tons absorption. Practically,
the Yb has an absorption curve like the one shown in Fig. 5 which present the
cross-section of the Ytterbium-doped germanosilicate glass fiber core versus
the wavelength (nm). In Fig. 5, the emission and absorption spectrum are
presented for the Ytterbium-doped germanosilicate glass. In wavelengths
around 910 nm and near 975 nm, the pumping can be applied, where for the
975 nm pumping, the only 50% excitation level can be obtained caused by the
stimulated emission, where the absorption length and the quantum defect are
smaller compared to that for the 910 nm pumping. For lasing around 1030 nm
and behind 1080 nm, the strong and nearly three and four-level behaviours
occur respectively with a very low reabsorption.
A broader spectrum of light can be absorbed in a shorter wavelength of
910 nm, and a more efficient absorption occurs at the wavelength of 975 nm.
The photon absorbed by the Yb dopant disappears and the electron within the
(2) atomic nucleus move to higher orbital as an evi-dence of the absorbed energy,
a phenomenon called pumping. Other elements such as erbium, neodymium,
praseodymium, dysprosium, thulium, and holmium are also utilized for
optical fiber doping.
For each EDFA or YDFA laser cavities, a ring configuration can be
assumed, where it is consisting of entirely isotropic single-mode fiber. The
utilized Yb and Er fiber amplifiers comprise of single-mode Yb-doped active
fiber and single-mode Er-doped active fiber, respectively, where these are co-
pumped by a 974 nm laser diode as shown in Fig. 6. A 974 nm laser diode is
used to pump the EDF/YDF through a wave-length division multiplexer
(WDM). The rest of the cavity is constituted with single-mode fiber. A
polarization-independent optical isolator is used to ensure unidirectional
propagation, where the polarization controller (PC) is used to adjust the net
cavity birefringence. The in-corporation of the material saturable absorber
(SA) into the laser cavity enables Q-switched or mode-locked pulse
generation through passive techniques.
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S. Addanki et al.
Fig. 6. Wavelength division multiplexer (WDM), a Polarization controller (PC), Isolator (ISO), Saturable absorber (SA), Optical spectrum analyzer (OSA).
Optical fiber fabrication
Fabrication of optical fiber (shown in Fig. 7) involves three stages as
follow. The preform formation, a glass cylinder that could be used to prepare
the optical fiber. This possesses a length of 3 feet with a width of 1 in.. Its
physical look is similar to that of the finished fiber posses-sing core and
cladding that is much wider and shorter. This is followed by the pulling stage
where the heating of the preform takes place at a temperature of about 2000
°C followed by pulling off a tiny strand of glass at one end. It is necessary to
control the diameter of the strand carefully, through adjustments in heating
and also the tension applied during the pulling process. This strand becomes
the optical fiber con-sisting of both core and cladding. Finally, the fiber is
cooled slowly and carefully, covered with a jacket and coiled reels. There are
three most important approaches to fabricate fibers with moderate low loss
wa-veguide [20]. These are (1) The modified chemical vapor deposition
method or MCVD, (2) The outside vapor deposition method or OVD, and (3)
Vapour axial deposition method or VAD.
The modified chemical vapor deposition
Modified chemical vapor deposition method (MCVD), begins with a
hollow preform glass of about 3 feet with adiameter1-inch. This is placed
inside vertical or a horizontal lathe and rolled swiftly. A com-puter-controlled
mixture of gasses such as silicon tetrachloride (SiCl 4) or germanium
tetrachloride (GeCl4) is then passed through the inside of the tube. A heat
source (about 1900 Kelvin) is then passed up and down
Fig. 7. The modified chemical vapor deposition.
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Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750
on the outside of the tube. A slight quantity of the mixture of the gas
precipitated fuses to the tube’s surface. This gas is a vaporized SiO 2 (glass)
containing controlled amounts of some impurities that can cause changes to
the refractive index of the SiO2. The movement of the torch causes the
formation of a glass layer within the rapidly spinning pre-form. The dopant
varies for each layer to change the index across the diameter. This is followed
by drawing of the preform in a drawing tower. The length of the fiber can be
up to 10 km.
Outside vapor deposition
In the outside vapor deposition method, a target rod is used in a chamber
and it is spun speedily on the lathe. The mixture of gasses is passed in
between the rod and the source of the heat. Upon every passage of the source
of the heat some gasses can react with the outer surface of the rod and fuse
there. This results in the formation of soot in the preform. After building up
enough layers, the removal of the target rod and subsequent collapsing of the
residual preform soot into a solid rod follows. It is thereafter transferred to a
tower where the fiber could be pulled into the desired fiber length.
Axial vapor deposition
In this method, miniature target rod is used. This is put up and suspended
at an end. This is followed by the passage of the gas mixture in between the
rod end and the source of the heat. After the building up of the tile soon as the
preform elongation to remove the heat source
S. Addanki et al. Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750

takes place slowly. The building up of the tile soot is normally caused by
reaction and fusion of gasses at the rod end. After forming the de-sired length,
removal of the rod follows leaving the preform soot. The preform soot is now
drawn at the tower by heating to the desired fiber length.
The high deposition temperature is required for sintering the de-posited
material. To avoid any distortions of the substrate tube, the temperature
should not be so high. To build up the desired material layer by layer, the
torch is traversed repeatedly, therefore the compo-sition of the layers changes
during each traversal, thus the graded index film can be formed. The exact
deposition program is required and used for the fiber design and composition.
Using this technique, both step and graded single and multi-mode structures
can be fabricated.
Fiber coating application
As the preventive coating, the usual polymer is quickly applied as soon as
the fiber is formed. This is necessary to provide mechanical protection to the
fiber. This coating as the inner part is soft, where the outer fragment is harder.
The total thickness of the coating typically varies from 62.5 to 187.5 μm.
Some fiber types together with their specifications are given in Table 1 [21].
Advances in optical fiber laser
Thought the process of guiding light was described since 1842 by Daniel
Colladon in his article “ On the reflections of a ray of light inside a parabolic
liquid stream”, followed by theoretical work of Kao in the 1960/1970s
[22,23], it leads to the award of 2009 Nobel Prize in physics. These were
subsequently followed by the development of fused silica optical fibers and
later commercialization for communications [24]. Since then there has been a
continuous interest in the usage of the optical fibers for the wider range of
sensor applications. These include the measurement of pressure, strain,
temperature, chemical species and laser velocimetry [25–27].
Therefore, erbium-doped fiber amplifiers (EDFAs) remain one of the great
achievements in the fiber laser technology. The confinement of rays within the
core of the fiber preserves the intensity of the pump indefinitely along the
fiber. However, in a conventional crystal laser, high power density is achieved
by light focusing which limits the ef-fective pumping length due to the
divergence [28]. Due to the small core diameter of single-mode fibers, very
high-power density can be achieved. The main efforts to expand the
applications of the EDFA are to include some factors, where there has been an
emphasis on the system development system implementation [29].
Particularly, stimu-lating of laser amplifiers can be achieved by distant
pumping of the EDFA at around 1.47 pm. Mode locking of ultra-fast lasers
has been attractive due to the simplicity of the process. The fiber Bragg
gratings have gained many concerns on the advancement of mode-locked
lasers because these allow direct integration of filters, wavelength selection
elements, and mirrors into the fiber laser thereby increasing the sen-sitivity of
the fiber as well as minimizing optical loss. The fiber Bragg gratings can be
utilized in single frequency fiber laser as well. Fiber lasers can be constructed
by semiconductors and used as tele-communication sources owning many
advantages such as compatibility with optical fibers, their narrow bandwidth,
as well as high power output. Upconversion lasers have also received
attention in recent years due to produce low-cost solid-state sources of visible
light.
Optical fiber technology and applications
There has been a great impact made by the optical fiber in many fields
[30]. This is due to inherent advantages of the optical fibers such as low cost,
small size, and ruggedness.
Optical fiber sensors
Optical fiber sensors have been developed for a wide range appli-cations
in aircraft. Some potential drawbacks can be associated with the optical fiber
sensors in aircraft such as requirements for newly devel-oped infrastructure
for installation and maintenance [31]. Optical fiber sensors found a wide
range of applications due to their lightweight, low-cost, cost-effective, high
sensitivity, immunity to corrosion, high-temperature performance, as well as
their resistance to electromagnetic interference. Although, installing new
layout of optical sensors that could run electrical systems is a big challenge,
however, despite these inherent challenges which may seem to hinder any
further develop-ments in optical fiber technology, there has been a continuous
interest in the commercialization of optical fiber sensors for aviation
industries due to the inherent advantages possessed. These include high tem-
perature, joint pressure, and temperature as well as sensors for engine health,
hydraulics and landing gear monitoring, an ultra-high sensitive pressure
sensor for oil, pneumatic and fluid aero systems, combined acceleration and
temperature sensors for condition monitoring for ro-tating components [31].
Optical fibers also found applicability in air crafts structural health monitoring
[32]. Performance monitors are now required for more effective maintenance.
Quite a number of applica-tions in modern aircraft required light-weight
objects together with improved performance, thus advanced carbon composite
materials were exploited and used in the wings of Dreamliner 787 [33],
however, this suppers potential new challenges when protection against
lightning strikes is required. Here, the optical fibers proffer alternative
solution due to the lightweight nature of the fibers and their immunity to
electromagnetic interference. Sensors are also used for predictive
maintenance in engine health monitoring [34]. For example, sensors can be
permanently fitted to send engine health monitoring data to the aircraft pilot.
These can include pressure and temperature sensors for monitoring fan,
compressors and turbines performances.
Optical fiber sensors for sensing monitoring

The development of optical fibers for sensing applications such as

Table 1
tracking of molecular species based on evanescent field absorption
Types of fiber and their specifications.
spectroscopy has been demonstrated in many research investigations [35–37].
Attenuation (dB-km) A side-polished fiber can be fabricated by utilizing the sheet of silicon
sandpaper having a grain size of 1000 and a cylindrical shaft made of
Fiber type Core/cladding 850 nm 1300 nm 1550 nm Bandwidth
Diameter (m) (MHz-km) premature ventricular contraction (PVC), where the sandpaper is wrapped
onto the cylinder shaft. Fig. 8 shows the small 5 V, DC motor with a
Step index 200/240 6 50 −3
maximum speed of 11442 RPM and a torque of 1.04 × 10 Nm which is
Multi- 50/125 3 1 600
mode connected to the cylinder shaft. A single-mode fiber (SMF-28) is placed
Graded 6.25/125 3 1 500 between two parallel Newport M-562-D optical stage align-ments. The
index Newport 561-FH fiber holders are used to fix the fiber po-sition and prevent
85/125 3 1 500 any fiber displacement. The polishing part of 3-centimeters has been stripped
100/140 3 1 300
Single- 8-9/125 0.5 0.3 Very high
and its coating removed, therefore the sandpaper will polish the bottom side
mode of the fiber and will create a flat surface. During the polishing process, the
single-mode fiber should be

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S. Addanki et al.
Fig. 8. Side-polished fiber experiment setup, (a) stage of the setup, (b) re-moving
process of the cladding.
held tightly between the two fiber holders and above the polishing wheel.
High precision alignment stage (Newport M-561D) is used to move the motor
in horizontal and vertical directions. The alignment stage has a resolution of
10 µm, therefore small adjustment of the motor is possible to fabricate the
side-polished fiber.
Here, few millimeters long SMF polished region has been created, where
the performance of the device can be significantly varied with respect to the
different thickness of the cladding layer, therefore ac-curate monitoring of the
cladding removal should be taken in account during the polishing process. If
the created evanescent field faces the external environment, insertion loss
increases due to the direct inter-action of the evanescent field and the external
refractive index. To convince this condition, the cladding should have a
thickness of several micrometers. Fig. 9 shows the geometry of the polished
fiber, where the interaction of the evanescent field with the cladding
boundaries is il-lustrated [38].
The radiant modes can be presented in terms of penetration depth. θlm is
the angle of incidence, and αeff is the effective mode radius, which
Fig. 9. (a) Polishing geometry, D: cladding diameter, h: depth, R: polisher’s radius. (b) Ray tracing mechanism.
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Results in Physics 10 (2018) 743–750
can be presented by the following equations.
θ −1 /kn ) (3)
= sin (β
lm lm 1
a = a + x s (θlm) (4)
eff
βlm is defined by the propagation constant for the first (m = 1) mode and the Goos-
Hanchen shift causes an enlargement which is defined as
x s, where k is presenting the wave number. If the TE and TM modes have the
same enlargement provided that the contrast of refractive indices (n1 and n2)
is not high, the coefficient xs can be defined by
2 2 2 1/2 (5)
x s = 1/[k (n 1 sin θlm−n2 ) ]
If r = aeff , then the reflection’s angle becomes θlm−φt where φt is the angle
between the z-axis and the tangential plane to the polished sur-face. It will
then arrive at the opposite interface with an angle of in-cidence θlm−2ϕt. The
incident angle can shift to the critical angle by varying the thickness of the
cladding, where ϕc as cut-off angle can be expressed by the following
equation, and the θcr is the total internal reflection.
ϕc = (θlm −θcr)/2 (6)
The cut-off penetration depth (hc), therefore can be calculated as:
h c = D /2−a eff + R (1−cos ϕc) (7)
Using this method which is very simple, cost-effective, and compact in
setting, the removal process of the cladding can be performed me-chanically.
As the motor rotates, the sandpaper slowly removes the cladding until reaches
the interface of the core. The total diameter of the motor shaft is about 1 cm,
thus only a few millimeters of the SMF meets the sandpaper. Using this
method, around 2 mm length of the polished fiber can be provided. The motor
is powered by a conventional laboratory DC source, and the motor’s speed
can be controlled by varying the DC voltage. During the polishing process,
the motor speed can be adjusted to provide optimized speed which prevents
over-pol-ishing, which would damage the core, or under-polishing, which
results in the cladding of the SMF is not sufficiently removed. A visible red
test signal from a fault locator is launched into the SMF during the process,
allowing for visual verification. Once a red light is observed and leaking out
at the fiber polished site, it means that the cladding is almost re-moved.
The sensitivity of the fabricated side-polished fiber is highly de-pendent
on its physical properties such as the refractive index. Fiber-based remote
sensing techniques have been developed for detection of inaccessible media.
When compared to conventional or open optical route methods, detecting can
be done along the entire region of the fiber while the laser intermingles with
the adjacent media. Optical fiber sensors have also been developed based on
the surface reflective ca-pacity of the metal film for corrosion detection [39–
42]. Optical bio-sensors that make use of refractive index changes as the
sensing
S. Addanki et al.
transduction signal have been developed for detection of biomolecules in their
natural forms. Optical biosensors operate based on two detec-tion protocols:
label-free and fluorescence-based detections, wherein the fluorescence-based
detection, tags such as dyes are used to label the bio-recognition molecules or
the target molecules. The higher the in-tensity of the fluorescence provides the
higher the interaction strength between the target and the recognition
molecule. Hence, the intensity serves as an indication of the target molecule
as well as its strength [43].
Conclusion
Optical fiber technology has been used in many areas of tele-
communication, photonics, medical and engineering. It has attracted many
researchers due to its performance, low loss, no interference, higher
bandwidth and its inherently high data-carrying capacity. Although optical
fibers have many advantages, there still exist some disadvantages associated
with the optical fiber technology. One of the disadvantages of the optical
fibers is that in spite of the natural abun-dance of the material for optical fiber
construction which is the sand, the fibers are more expensive compared to
copper cables. Another disadvantage is that; high-skilled manpower is needed
for optical fiber mounting.
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