Fabrication of microgrooves with excimer laser ablation techniques for plastic optical fiber array alignment purposes

Abstract

Laser ablation is extremely well suited for rapid prototyping and proves to be a versatile technique delivering high accuracy dimensioning and repeatability of features in a wide diversity of materials. In this paper, we present laser ablation as a fabrication method for micro machining of arrays consisting of precisely dimensioned U-grooves in dedicated polycarbonate and polymethylmetacrylate plates. The dependency of the performance on various parameters (wavelength, energy density and pulse frequency) is discussed. The fabricated plates are used to hold optical fibres by means of a UVcurable adhesive. Stacking and glueing of the plates allows the assembly of a 2D connector of plastic optical fibres for short distance optical interconnects.

Development of micro co-axial diamond wheel-tool array using a hybrid process of electrochemical co-deposition and RWEDM technique

“…For example, Carson et al (2007) and Guan et al (2010) employed miniature devices utilizing a large collection of grilles for DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and cell detection; Naessens et al (2000) implemented precision alignment for plastic optical fibres using microgroove structures; and Chang (2005) and Fischbach and Dunning (2008) successfully applied microgrooves as micro fluid channels in biomedical and biochemical devices. Research into technologies for machining precise microgroove arrays has been undertaken in many areas, such as the MEMS (micro electro mechanical system) process, etching, short pulse laser methods, micro milling, micro EDM, and ultra-precision machining.…”

Defect Analysis in Microgroove Machining of Nickel-Phosphide Plating by Small Cross-Angle Microgrooving

“…An optical glass microgroove array is an important component in photoelectric systems due to its function of reducing light reflectivity, improving transmittance/diffraction efficiency, and controlling light spectrum distribution [1][2][3]. However, it is difficult to fabricate optical glass microgrooves directly because of the brittleness of the glass materials at room temperature [4][5][6].…”

Development of a Multiple Micro Diamond Wheel-Tools

“…Microgrooves are highly required in a variety of fields such as DNA detection [1,2], plastic optical fibre alignment [3], micro fluid channels in biomedical and biochemical applications and various optical devices. Consequently, various micro machining techniques, such as the MEMS process, laser beam, micro milling, micro EDM and ultra precision machining have been developed for machining microgrooves.…”