Photonic Crystal Fiber Tips
Stripping and Cleaving
The fibers supplied by Crystal Fibre are all equipped with a standard acrylate coating (or in the case of our high power products, a high temperature coating), which can be removed with conventional stripping tools used for telecommunication fiber. Some fibers have a non-standard outer diameter, and for this type of fiber, we recommend an adjustable stripper. Both mechanical and thermal strippers can be used.
Stripping with solvents or other liquids should be avoided as capillary forces
might cause the liquid to enter the microstructure of the fiber, resulting
in unpredictable performance and possi-ble damage of the fiber. Furthermore,
we do not rec-ommend burning of the coating, as the high temperatures can
make the fiber fragile and can cause fiber breaks.
When working with bare nonlinear fibers in a non-cleanroom environment, dust
and other contami-nation might deteriorate the performance over time as the
fiber facets are contaminated. As the fiber facets cannot be cleaned with
e.g. ethanol, recleaving the fiber is necessary. All fibers can be cleaved
with conven-tional high precision cleavers (e.g. Fujikuras
CT-04 or CT-07 cleavers). The fibers can also be cleaved using e.g. a
diamond scriber, but cleaving by hand might yield a high cleaving angle and
bad cleave quality, reducing the coupling efficiency.
Recleaving can be avoided by choosing a con-nectorized fiber with sealed,
cleanable end facets (see more information about connectors and end-sealing
in the section on "Fiber Termination Solutions").
Splicing
All our fibers with a core size above 2 µm can be spliced to other PCFs or step-index fibers using standard splicing equipment. The best results are obtained using filament fusion splicers (like the FFS2000 filament fusion splicer from Vytran Corporation) as they offer a larger degree of control in the splice process compared to arc fusion splicers.
