Reflowed solgel spherical microlens for high-efficiency optical coupling between a laser diode and a single-mode fiber.
To improve the coupling efficiency between a laser diode and a single-mode fiber, we propose a two-microlens coupling scheme that uses two solgel spherical microlenses for high coupling efficiency. The conventional reflow technique was employed and extended to the inorganic-organic hybrid SiO2/ZrO2 solgel material to form the microlenses. Preliminary results show that the coupling efficiency was increased to--1.28 dB (74.5%) by the proposed scheme, compared with a coupling efficiency of--10.13 dB (9.7%) by the butt-joint method. The proposed fabrication technique demonstrates that use of a reflowed solgel spherical microlens is a cost-effective mass-production approach to application of micro-optical elements in optical communication.
He
Miao
M
Photonics Research Centre, School of Electrical & Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Nanyang Avenue, Singapore 639798.
Yuan
Xiaocong
X
Bu
Jing
J
Cheong
Wai Chye
WC
Moh
Ken Jin
KJ