Fabrication of ultraviolet-curable adhesive bottle-like microresonators by wetting and photocuring

Abstract

This work presents a remarkably simple method for the fabrication of ultraviolet (UV)-curable adhesive bottle-like microresonators (BLMRs). The main fabrication process involves two steps: (1) creating liquid bottle-like microcavities along the taper waist of an optical fiber taper under interfacial tension and (2) curing the liquids into solids by UV light irradiation. The shape of the BLMRs can be fitted with a truncated harmonic-oscillator profile. Whispering gallery mode resonances of the bottle-like microcavity were excited via a tapered fiber at different positions along its axis. A cleaner spectrum with identifiable and traceable features over a broad wavelength range at the center excitation position and the estimated Q factors close to 10⁵ around 1.55 μm are observed. The shifts of resonance frequency by the input light power change demonstrate the potential applications of thermo-optic sensing and frequency tuning.

Overstepping the upper refractive index limit to form ultra-narrow photonic nanojets

“…f C , f P and f H ; ω C , ω P , ω H are respectively the focal points and beam widths of the generated PNJs from these three profiled R-MPCMs. Choice of P-type and H-type profiles, as optimization options, is mainly due to the consideration of developing three-dimensional (3D) high- Ri superlens with controllable heating-and-deforming or self-assembling methods in the future 25–27 .

Figure 4( a ) Four boundary profiles for narrowing the transverse beam widths of the PNJs. C-type: circular type, P-type: parabolic type, H-type: harmonic-oscillating type, L-type: linear type.

…”

Whispering Gallery Mode Optical Microresonators: Structures and Sensing Applications

“…In 2014, Gu and others proposed to use UV curing binder to prepare microcavity resonators. The preparation method was simple, cheap and sensitive, which provided great potential for UV‐curable adhesives . In the same year, Zhang et al.…”

Optical Microbottle Resonators for Sensing

“…It has been shown that ultraviolet (UV)-curing epoxy can be used to form droplets on an optical fiber that, thanks to interfacial forces, self-assemble into microbottles [22]. These resonators showed Q -factors near ${10}^5$, and a strong dependence of the resonance wavelengths on the power used to probe them (due to the large thermo-optic coefficient of the resin).…”

“…( a ) Epoxy-based microbottle. Image adapted with permission from [22] (©the Optical Society of America); ( b ) “soften-and-compress” method. Image adapted with permission from [21] (©the Optical Society of America); ( c ) spin-on-glass-based microbottle, image adapted from [23], released under the CC BY 4.0 license (); ( d ) “heat-and-pull” method.…”