Study On Polymer Optical Fiber Coupler

Based on a great number of references, this paper introduces widely the development on POF couplers all over world. After comparing the ways of making POF couplers, we decide to research and develop tapered mixing-rod couplers for polymer optical fibers. First of all, this paper study fabricating method, coupling model, structures and performance of all kinds of optical coupler, and find the common and difference between SOF couplers and POF couplers. Secondly, this paper compares many methods of fabricating POF couplers and gives out their advantages and disadvantages. We find that there are great differences between the methods of making POF couplers and SOF couplers, for polymer optical fiber's core large diameter. Nowadays, differing from SOF couplers, the fabricating methods of POF couplers are developing, and the industrial arts are being improved too. Among all methods, POF mixing-rod couplers are widely developed for they have high performance/cost and simple technology. Moreover, we find that POF TMRC is superior to other MRC, but the industrial arts are non-perfect. In order to make the fabrication of POF TMRC easy, but keep the good performances, based on the POF TMRC size is much larger than the wavelength in it, we present ray tracing method to simulate their performances. It is obtained that the relation between the coupling ratio and the tapered mixing-rod size through numerical simulating by ray tracing method. In according to the simulated result, we made some couplers through exactly machine conjunction and stretching the big diameter PMMA waveguide made by bulk polymerization, and measured them. The data shows that ray tracing method presented in this paper is feasible and the simulated result is correct. Moreover, the POF couplers made in this paper have very good performance and are in advance of native pursuers.