Fabrication of Multi-point Side-Firing Optical Fiber by Laser Micro- ablation

Abstract

A multipoint, side-firing design enables an optical fiber to output light at multiple desired locations along the fiber body. This provides advantages over traditional end-to-end fibers, especially in applications requiring fiber bundles such as brain stimulation or remote sensing. This Letter demonstrates that continuous wave (CW) laser micro-ablation can controllably create conical-shaped cavities, or side windows, for outputting light. The dimensions of these cavities determine the amount of firing light and their firing angle. Experimental data show that a single side window on a 730 μm fiber can deliver more than 8% of the input light. This can be increased to more than 19% on a 65 μm fiber with side windows created using femtosecond laser ablation and chemical etching. Fine control of light distribution along an optical fiber is critical for various biomedical applications such as light-activated drug-release and optogenetics studies.

Description

Keywords

High power lasers, Laser beams, Laser light, Laser systems, Plastic optical fibers, Tilted fiber Bragg gratings

Citation

Copyright 2017 Optics Letters. This is a post-print version of a published paper that is available at: https://www.osapublishing.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-42-9-1808 Recommended citation: Nguyen, Hoang, Md Masud Parvez Arnob, Aaron T. Becker, John C. Wolfe, Matthew K. Hogan, Philip J. Horner, and Wei-Chuan Shih. "Fabrication of Multi-point Side-Firing Optical Fiber by Laser Micro-ablation." Optics letters 42, no. 9 (2017): 1808. DOI: 10.1364/OL.42.001808. URL: https://www.osapublishing.org/ol/abstract.cfm?uri=ol-42-9-1808 This item has been deposited in accordance with publisher copyright and licensing terms and with the author’s permission.