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Although the fibers fabricated show promising
spectral results, they suffer from high background
loss, this is mainly due to the purity and preparation
environment and method of the samples.
Furthermore, clean room environment was not
utilized during the process.
Nonetheless, we would like to perceive this
shortcoming in a positive manner: i.e. clean room
environment is not necessary for this prototyping
process, although it would be good for potential better
results. To further improve the fabrication precision,
tighter control of the temperature is essential. This
“quick and dirty” process can be adopted until one is
satisfy with the doping solution composition before
switching it to the standard fabrication for good
quality fibers.
Figure 7: Spectra behavior of the fabricated Erbium doped
silica fiber when pumped at 976 nm.
4 CONCLUSIONS
In conclusion, we have demonstrated a concept of
miniaturizing the standard fiber fabrication processes
to a benchtop version with repeatable results. We
have also successfully fabricated rare earth doped, i.e.
Ytterbium and Erbium doped silica fibers using the
method incorporating with solution doping technique,
and obtained reasonable spectra results. Undeniably,
the length and quality of the fibers are traded-off by
the time and cost involved. This process is beneficial
for those who are requiring small quantity of the
specialty optical fiber for rapid prototyping purposes,
especially for the less mature optical fiber
technologies, such as soft-glasses fibers. It also opens
up the possibilities of exploring other glass hosts with
various materials and compositions in a smaller scale.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is funded by Temasek Laboratories @
NTU (Grant No: 9016100134). We acknowledge the
technical support by the laboratory managers and
technical support officers of OPTIMUS and COFT,
NTU
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