Current Applied Physics 19 (2019) 1334–1337

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Current Applied Physics

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cap

Fabrication method for ultra-long optical micro/nano-fibers T

a a b b b b
Donghwa Lee , Kwang Jo Lee , Jin-Hun Kim , Kyungdeuk Park , Dongjin Lee , Yoon-Ho Kim ,
Heedeuk Shinb,∗
a
Department of Applied Physics, Institute of Natural Science, Kyung Hee University, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, 17104, South Korea
b
Department of Physics, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Gyeongsangbuk-do, 37673, South Korea

ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT

Keywords: Nonlinear optical interactions can be enhanced dramatically by tight light-confinement and long interaction-length.
Micro/nano-fiber Optical fiber tapers with micro/nano-thickness waists considerably increase light-matter interactions in or near their
Tapered fiber waists. Here, we propose and demonstrate a novel tapering method of fabricating uniform, low-loss, and ultra-long
Flame-brushing and pulling method micro/nano fibers. The technique comprises three steps for conventional flame-brushing and pulling, recalibration,
Nonlinear optical effects
and one-directional pulling. Using the proposed method, two strands of tapered fibers are fabricated, having 0.82-
μm/1.6-μm diameters, 220-mm/500-mm uniform lengths with < 55-nm/66-nm diameter variances, and high
transmittances of 90.2%/91.5%. A figure of merit indicating the nonlinear-optic efficiency is defined and used to
compare the results obtained in this study with those for tapered fibers in references. The proposed tapering method
will be very useful for the fabrication of tapered fiber devices exploiting nonlinear optic effects, including Brillouin
scattering, Raman amplification, and other third-order nonlinearities for supercontinuum generation.

1. Introduction In this study, we developed a novel technique to fabricate long and

uniform tapered optical MNFs. An MNF with the desired diameter is
Optical micro/nano-fibers (MNFs) offer the advantages of tight op- formed using the “flame-brushing and pulling” technique followed by an
tical confinement and long interaction lengths, leading to strong eva- extra one-way pulling to elongate the MNF to the desired length. The
nescent fields for light-matter interaction, excellent coupling efficiencies demonstrated two A/B fibers in this study have 0.82-μm/1.6-μm dia-
with disk resonators, high flexibilities, and enhanced nonlinearities [1]. meters with 55-nm/66-nm tolerances, 220-mm/500-mm lengths, and
Photonic crystal fibers (PCFs) and tapered optical fibers can be listed as 90.2%/91.5% transmittances. The length could be increased further if a
two examples of fibers with micro-diameter cores where strong nonlinear longer pulling stage is used and the pulling speed is optimized. This new
optic interactions occur [2]. However, PCFs are costly and their optical technique can facilitate the production of long and uniform MNFs with
properties are very sensitive to the non-uniform variations of their inner high transmittance, which is useful for numerous applications including
structures along the fiber length, resulting in non-uniform optical cou- signal processing by using nonlinear effects and light-matter interaction.
pling strengths in the given fiber lengths. In MNFs tapered from com-
mercialized fibers, their sizes are readily controllable by varying the ta- 2. Fabrication methods
pering conditions for heating and pulling [3–5]. The structure of MNF
consists of input/output regular single-mode fiber sections, conically The desirable properties of MNF devices for strong nonlinear optic
tapered sections, and a fine micro/nano-wire filament. During the fab- effects or evanescent coupling include a small cross-sectional area,
rication process of an MNF by using the heat-and-pull method, the flame uniform diameter, long MNF waist, and high transmittance. To fulfill
(a heat source) is moved along the length of the fiber several times, these requirements, we propose a one-directional fiber-tapering tech-
which is gradually increased via the application of a force at the ends. nique as illustrated in Fig. 1. The method in this study mimics a typical
This causes a progressive decrease of the fiber diameter. The length of fiber drawing process where a preform is melted and pulled to fabricate
the uniform section depends on the target diameter, and a tapered fiber a long fiber filament. The proposed one-directional fiber-tapering
with a small diameter, in general, has a short uniform section and vice method consists of three steps. The first step is the flame-brushing and
versa. Therefore, it is challenging to fabricate a long and fine optical pulling process. A short length fiber is slowly pulled in both directions
micro/nanofiber with high uniformity as well as low insertion loss. while flame is moved back and forth along the fiber, as shown in

∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: heedeukshin@postech.ac.kr (H. Shin).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cap.2019.08.018
Received 14 June 2019; Received in revised form 16 August 2019; Accepted 20 August 2019
Available online 21 August 2019
1567-1739/ © 2019 Korean Physical Society. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
D. Lee, et al. Current Applied Physics 19 (2019) 1334–1337

Fig. 2. Experimental setup used for the fabrication of the tapered micro/na-
nofibers and the measurement of the MNF diameter. SMF (single-mode fiber),
HWP (half-wave plate), PBS (polarization beam splitter). (b) The transmittance
during the tapering process against time. The times for each step are indicated
by red arrows. (For interpretation of the references to colour in this figure le-
Fig. 1. The three steps of the micro/nano-fiber fabrication technique proposed
gend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
in this work and schematic diagrams of a tapered fiber. (a) the first step is to
create the pre-uniform section with adiabatic regions, (b) the second step in-
volves a recalibration, and (c) the third step of the one-directional pulling ap- 3. Experiment and discussion
proach. The black and red arrows indicate the direction of movement of the
stages and flame, respectively. Schematic diagrams of the tapered fiber after (d) Fig. 2(a) illustrates a schematic diagram of the tapering system used
the first step and (e) the third step. Region I: the single-mode region with for the experiments. The system consists of a fiber-tapering setup as
125 µm /8.2 µm cladding/core diameter, Region II: the adiabatic region, Region well as fiber-diameter-measurement setup. The homemade fiber-ta-
III: the pre-uniform region, Region IV: the secondary adiabatic region of the pering setup comprises a stationary hydrogen-oxygen flame torch and
third step, and Region V: the micro/nano-sized diameter region. (For inter- two computer-controlled translation stages, and the whole tapering
pretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred process is controlled by a Labview code. A strand of a typical single-
to the Web version of this article.) mode fiber (SMF-28, Corning) is initially mounted and clamped at the
two points identified as A and B on each translation stage. The flame
Fig. 1(a). During this first step, the size of the fiber core and cladding torch is located between A and B and its position is fixed during the
gradually decrease, yielding a adiabatic change of fiber diameter for fabrication process. Instead of moving flame, the two translation stages
high transmission [as seen in Fig. 1(d)]. In the adiabatic region, the move back and forth in the same direction with slightly different speeds
incident LP01 (single) mode light leaks out to the cladding region, [7]. The parameters determining the fiber dimension are the gas flow,
thereby, supporting higher-order modes. The power transfer between nozzle size, flame speed, fiber pulling speed, total iteration, and moving
the LP01 mode and one of the higher-order modes repeats with every time. The gas flows under our experimental conditions are 320 [stan-
modal beat length along the fiber, and transmission loss can be mini- dard cubic centimeter per minutes: sccm] for Oxygen gas and 160
mized if both the length and surface gradient of the adiabatic region are [sccm] for Hydrogen gas. The flame nozzle diameter was 1 mm for
carefully chosen [6]. Fig. 1(d) illustrates a schematic of the fiber after demonstration 1 and 1.5 mm for demonstration 2. The flame speed is
completion of the first step. Region I, II, and III are the single-mode, the speed of the rear (slower) stage, and the pulling speed is the dif-
adiabatic, and pre-uniform regions, respectively. ference between the speed of the front and rear stages. The parameters
The second step is referred to as the recalibration process of the tapering used in the experimental demonstrations are summarized in Table 1.
method. The position of the flame is relocated to the end of the pre-uniform To measure the diameter of an MNF, we employed the forward scat-
section that is closer to the right-side translation state as shown in Fig. 1(b). tering method with a 405-nm-laser diode (P = 40 mW) as a coherent light
The third step involves flame-brushing and the one-directional pulling source [8] as shown in Fig. 2(a). A circular beam from a fiber-pigtailed laser
process that is designed to create a long and uniform micro/nano diameter diode is collimated and then passes through a series of half-wave plates and
fiber. The fiber strand is pulled only in one direction (right-hand side in a polarization beam splitter to set a horizontally polarized beam with a
Fig. 1(c)), while the flame is slowly translated in the opposite direction (left- polarization that is parallel to the longitudinal axis direction of the fiber.
hand side in Fig. 1(c)). The fiber material in the pre-uniform region is The beam, which is focused by an objective lens, is irradiated onto the fiber,
melted and pulled to fabricate a long micro/nano diameter fiber. The black forming a diffraction pattern on the screen behind the fiber. The spot size of
and red arrows represent the direction of movement of the stages and flame, the beam at the surface of the fiber is ~250 μm in diameter. An image
respectively. Fig. 1(e) illustrates a schematic of a micro/nanofiber consisting sensor to extract the diameter values captures the intensity profile on the
of (I) a single-mode region, (II) an adiabatic region, (III) a pre-uniform re- screen [8]. The measured results obtained by the forward scattering method
gion, (IV) a secondary adiabatic region, and (V) the MNF region. The vo- are in excellent agreement with that obtained using a scanning electron
lume of fiber material in the pre-uniform region determines the length of microscope and the difference between the two results was less than 10 nm.
the MNF region, but practically, the travel range of the translation stage The first step is the flame brushing and pulling process to create the
limits the length of MNF. The secondary adiabatic regions should slowly pre-uniform section. Under our experimental conditions, the minimum
vary for high transmission, and the transmittance after the first step does not width of the diameter of the pre-uniform region is approximately 10 μm,
change during the second and third steps. which was heuristically determined, and the measured length of the pre-

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D. Lee, et al. Current Applied Physics 19 (2019) 1334–1337

Table 1
The parameters used in the experimental demonstrations.
Demo. # Step Flame Fiber pulling Total Moving time per
speed speed (mm/s) iteration iteration (sec.)
(mm/s)

1 Step1 4.7 0.016 52 4.5

Step2 5 0.019 1 7
Step3 0.01 2.35 1 90
2 Step1 4.7 0.016 52 4.5
Step2 4.7 0.016 1 8.5
Step3 0.03 2.3 1 220

Fig. 4. The diameter of the 50-cm-long micro-fiber measured at fixed intervals.

Table 2
The previously reported results of MNF fabrication and the figure of merit for
the efficiency of the nonlinear effects in the tapered fibers.
Method L [mm ] D [µm ] T [%] ρ [ mm2 ] Ref. #
µm

Flame brush 5 43 – – [7]

Ceramic heater 300 112.5 – – [10]
Flame brush 4 0.26 20.9 27.1 [11]
Flame brush 90 2 95.5 22.0 [12]
Stabilized Flame 20 0.32 99.7 186 [13]
Flame brush 1 0.8 99.7 1.6 [14]
Flame brush 100 1.2 97.7 68.6 [15]
Flame brush 150 0.9 75 160 [16]
Flame brush 300 1.3 97 176 [17]
Flame brush 250 1 97 242 [18]
Flame brush 120 0.61 50 228 [19]
Fig. 3. The diameter of a tapered MNF as a function of position. The red dia- Flame brush 217 0.82 91.5 324 Current work
Flame brush 500 1.6 90.2 185 Current work
monds represent the measured diameter along the tapered fiber and the black
horizontal line indicates an averaged value of 0.82 µm over the 22 points
(217 mm) on the flat MNF region. (For interpretation of the references to colour
in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the Web version of this article.)
diameters from −5 to 0 cm increase rapidly. The position from −5 to
0 cm represents the region where unintentional pulling occurs during the
elimination of the flame after the whole fabrication process, indicating
uniform section is 1 cm. The tapering conditions for the minimum loss that immediate turn-off of the flame is necessary at the end of step 3.
can be found experimentally by monitoring the transmission of the fiber Note that the length of the micro-fiber that can be fabricated by the
during the whole tapering process. The transmittance of the tapered fiber one-directional fiber-tapering technique is practically limited by the travel
is monitored as seen in Fig. 2(b) using a continuous wave light source range of the translation stage in Fig. 2(a). Because the available travel
(Santec, TSL-550, P = 20 mW, λ = 1550 nm) and InGaAs power sensor range of the stage in the third step is 50 cm, up to 50-cm-long MNF can be
(Thorlabs, S154C). The transmitted power during step 1 fluctuates due to fabricated. Fig. 4 shows the fiber diameter profiles that were measured at
the modal beating and becomes stable after 250 s, indicating no modal 5-cm intervals along the length, and the average value of the measured
beating and slow diameter variance [6]. The transmittance after the first diameters over 11 points in the uniform tapered waist is 1.6 μm with a
step is approximately 97% and can be improved by optimizing the flame standard deviation of 66 nm. The speeds of the pulling stage and flame
speed, fiber pulling speed, total iteration, and moving time. The trans- movement for step 3 are 2.3 mm/s and 0.03 mm/s, respectively. In this
mittance during step 2 wavers due to the strong vibration of the fiber, but case, the length of the uniform micro-width region is 50 cm. The measured
this vibration causes no transmitted power drop after completing step 2. transmission including the pigtail connector loss is 90.2%.
The one-directional pulling process induces the changes of the fiber Given that the advantage of fabricating MNFs is the enhancement of
diameter (Region IV in Fig. 1(e)), but the transmitted power drops nei- nonlinear effects, a figure of merit to characterize the efficiency of non-
ther at the beginning nor end of step 3 in Fig. 2(b). This proves that the linear effects in tapered fibers is defined as L T /d 2 , where L , T , and d
adiabatic change condition is alleviated when the fiber thickness is about denote the tapered length of the uniform-width section, total transmittance,
several μm. The transmittance decreases slowly and linearly during step and diameter of the MNF region, respectively. Longer and finer micro-fi-
3 due to the scattering loss of the evanescent wave [9]. When the whole bers with lower loss will have larger values. Assuming that the loss occurs
process is completed, the power stays constant, as shown in Fig. 2(b). only in the adiabatic regions, the inner power of the MNFs is proportional
Fig. 3 shows the profile of the fiber diameter measured at every 2-cm to T , which represents the transmittance after the input adiabatic region.
point along the length of the fiber by the forward scattering method. The Even if the effective mode area differs from d 2 for sub-wavelength diameter
data in Fig. 3 includes the uniform micro-diameter region as well as parts fibers, it is a good approximation to treat d 2 as the mode area for the
of the secondary adiabatic region. From the data points obtained from the comparison of different MNF cases. The figure of merits of the recently
secondary adiabatic region, the measured surface gradient of this region reported results including that in this work are summarized in Table 2. The
was 4.4 mrad. The average value of the measured diameters over the 22 values of ρ in the current work are the best results, demonstrating the su-
points on the uniformly tapered waist was 0.82 μm with a standard de- periority of the proposed tapering method for the fabrication of ultra-long
viation of 55 nm (~λ/28 in telecom C-band). The entire length of the micro/nanofibers and for potential applications involving nonlinear optical
uniform-width section is about 217 mm, and the measured transmission effects, including strong four wave mixing, super-continuum generation,
including the pigtail connector loss is 91.5%. Note that the measured Brillouin scattering, Raman scattering, and mode-locked fiber lasers.

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