Fabrication of long-period gratings in poly(methyl methacrylate-co-methyl vinyl ketone-co-benzyl methacrylate)-core polymer optical fiber by use of a mercury lamp

Abstract

Polymer optical fiber (POF) with a highly photosensitive poly(methyl methacrylate-co-methyl vinyl ketoneco-benzyl methacrylate) core is fabricated. Gratings can be fabricated in the core of a POF with a low-cost mercury lamp. The part of the emission spectrum of the mercury lamp in which the cladding material exhibits photosensitivity is effectively filtered by a 1.5-mm-thick Pyrex glass to ensure that a long-period grating is formed only in the core of a POF. A long-period grating with a 3-dB resonant peak at 1568 nm is fabricated with 0.3 mW/ cm 2 of UV irradiation over a period of 200 s.

Fabrication of Polymer Optical Fibre (POF) Gratings

“…However, there are many materials being the irreversible. Their photosensitivity could be linked to photoisomerization of TSB [64], photodegradation of polymers co-polymerized with MMA and methyl vinyl ketone (MVK) [75], photocrosslinking based on photo-addition of anthracene groups [66,76], photopolymerization of residual monomers [77], photo-modification by ultrashort pulse laser [78,79,80,81,82]. So far, most POF gratings for photonic applications have been made of materials with irreversible photosensitivity.…”

“…Photosensitive POFs have mainly been reported by several research groups, listed in Table 2 [22,64,65,66,67,68,75,77,97]. These POFs have varying specifications (loss concentricity, diameter, photosensitivity, drawing induced anisotropy) [98].…”

“…Since their first fabrication in 1999, different types of POF gratings have been fabricated with different writing techniques [63,64,65,69,75,77,85,91,142]. So far, there are mainly two categories of writing techniques for the fabrication of POF gratings, which are mechanical and optical methods.…”

Polymer photonic crystal fibre for sensor applications

“…Photoinscribed long period gratings were first produced in step index fibre using a mecury discharge lamp 24 and in mPOF using a HeCd laser 25 . Because of the typical scale of the index modulation needed for LPGs -100s of microns as opposed to about half a micron for FBGs -they can be produced using alternative methods.…”

LPG in perfluorinated GI-POF for concentration measurement in liquids

“…The authors reported a diffraction efficiency of 1.6% and a modulation index of photoinduced 3x10 -4 and concluded inability to written grating directly in the core. On the other hand, the LPGs in POF commercially available are lacking in most studies fiber Bragg grating (FBG) in the POF have been made based cores poly-methyl-methacrylate (PMMA) doped with other monomers or colorants prepared by the same authors [10,11]. This paper first presents the fabrication of LPGs in PF-GI-POF using UV pulsed laser to wavelength of 355 nm.…”