End cap splicing of Photonic Crystal Fibers with outstanding quality

for high power applications

S. Böhmea, S. Fabiana, T. Schreibera, R. Eberhardta, A. Tünnermanna
a
Institut für Angewandte Optik und Feinmechanik, Albert-Einstein-Str. 7, 07745 Jena, Germany;

ABSTRACT

The application of photonic crystal fibers (PCF), especially in high power fiber laser systems, requires special
preparation technologies with some significant differences compared to standard fibers. Features, like air-clad structures,
highly rare-earth doped cores with low NA and stress applying parts of the PCFs, require additional steps in fiber
preparation and innovative splicing technologies to gain optical properties. Here we discuss a contamination- free carbon
dioxide laser splicing device, which is used for defined air-clad collapsing and end cap splicing to get a stable and sealed
fiber end face with preserved high beam quality and additional functionality. The special design of the computer-
controlled laser splicing process provides a versatile tool with high reproducibility for joining different geometries with
an adjustable well-balanced heat distribution. A wide range of PCFs with different diameters, air-clad structures and
doped materials up to ~2 mm have been spliced. For selected PCF-end cap splices cleave or polishing requirements as
well as results on beam quality, tensile strength and further splicing features are presented.
Keywords: CO2-laser, fusion splicing, end cap, PCF

1. INTRODUCTION
Fiber laser exhibit high beam quality with high efficiency up to the multi kW-range for continuous wave output and mJ
pulses in pulse regimes. A promising technology for further scaling is the utilization of photonic crystal fibers (PCF)
with high numerical aperture in pump cladding and large mode field diameters of the fundamental mode in the laser core
for the development of high-power fiber lasers and amplifier systems. For the integration of this fiber type with air holes
in a laser system special care must be taken. Cleaving and fusion splicing can become a time and material consuming
issue. But the sealing of the PCF-end facet is absolutely essential in order to avoid that the same particles or humidity
enter air holes, which would lead to system failure in high power applications.
Commercial fusion splicers utilize a hydrogen/oxygen flame, a resistively heated filament, electrical arc or plasma
discharge with two or more electrodes as a heat source. Nozzles and electrodes are worn down and might generate debris
on the fibers during the glass process.
1.1 CO2-laser fusion splicing device
In this chapter we demonstrate the fusion splicing of PCF on end caps based on a water-cooled 70W CO2-laser as the
heat source. The high absorption at the wavelength of 10.6µm offers a broad range of glass processing such as fiber
fusion splicing, tapering, cleaning etc. First successful applications of this laser fusion splicing technology with a special
optical design of the device have been made already [1]. In the following investigations we use some improvements in
terms of processing and changes to the device itself and demonstrate PCF-end cap splices with very short collapse range
of the air holes. In front of the CO2- laser a telescope is used for laser focus adjustment in order to distribute the heat
either on the end cap or the fiber. An annular (collimated or non-collimated) laser beam is generated by a tilted turning
mirror. After two off-axes parabolic mirrors, the generated conical annular laser beam enables the easy adaptation for
different fiber diameters via a height-adjustable z-stage (Fig. 1).

Laser-based Micro- and Nanopackaging and Assembly VI, edited by

Friedrich G. Bachmann, Wilhelm Pfleging, Kunihiko Washio, Jun Amako, Willem Hoving, Yongfeng Lu,
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 Figure 1. Optical and mechanical design for generating the annular laser beam with realized fiber gripper
A special spring loaded fiber gripper is moved manually in the slit of the second off-axis parabolic mirror and holds the
fiber in the center of the conical annular laser beam. Then a precision linear stage feeds the gripper with fiber towards the
gripped end cap. Thereby the gripper also serves as fiber coating protection during the splicing process and divides the
annular laser beam in two halves. Both, the tilt angle of the turning mirror and the well-chosen off-axis mirror define the
incident angle on the end cap and the fiber. For our laser fusion splicing process we use an off-axis incident angle of
about 20 degrees referring to the end cap for the conical beam shape generation. This allows sufficient space for a stable
fiber gripper and allows controlling the amount of light on the joining parts by Fresnel reflection. The slope of the
rotating laser beam is very useful for different annular laser beam sizes and to adjust the laser power on the joining parts,
especially for PCF and fibers with dopants.
In general the PCF-end cap fusion splicing process is similar to the standard fiber-fiber splicing. A Lab View™ program
controls the laser power via pulse width modulation, the high resolution stage for optical fiber feeding and two CCD
cameras. Both digital cameras are utilized to adjust the fiber and end cap towards each other and towards the laser (Fig.
2). The side view camera is equipped with a 4 x zoom lens for an adjustable optical resolution with an adaptable field of
view.

Figure 2. Fiber with partially viewable end cap and fiber captured by the side view camera (left) view through the end cap
with the second camera
The overlay cross hair lines serve as indispensable references for the invisible annular laser beam.
1.2 Properties of the applied PCFs
There is as huge number of different PCFs depending on the target application. The following fiber types have been used
during the investigations:

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 Firstly, for our investigations on the tensile strength of the splice joints we used a passive double-clad PCF, which had an
outer glass diameter of about 835µm from NKT Photonics (Fig. 3). The outer cladding is separated from the inner
cladding by an air-clad interface with a diameter of 500 µm and an NA of ~0.56. In the inner cladding the 7-missing hole
core is defined by a regular ring array of air holes. The relative hole size d/Λ for this inner clad is approximately 0.4 with
a period Λ of about 11.9µm. Consequently, the inner air hole structure diameter is ~170 µm.

Figure 3. Passive PCF (outer cladding diameter: 830 µm) for tensile strength investigations
Secondly, in order to investigate the impact of the CO2-laser fusion splicing on the beam quality we used an active PCF
with stress applying rods (DC-400/40-PZ-Yb, single-mode, polarizing double-clad Ytterbium-fiber with large mode
area, M²: 1.4) having an outer cladding diameter of 690µm (Fig. 4). The pump core is again defined by an air-clad with a
diameter of 400 µm (NA~0.57) and the core is defined by the inner hole array with d/Λ of 0.178 and a period of 10.1µm.
The dimensions of the applied end caps are 10 mm for the diameter and 5 mm thick.

Figure 4. Active PCF (outer cladding diameter: 690 µm) for beam quality measurements

2. EXPERIMENTS AND INVESTIGATIONS

2.1 Fusion splicing and strength test of the passive PCF

Before any fusion splicing can be carried out a carefully prepared fiber end is necessary. The following steps are applied
to guarantee a successful PCF-end cap splicing for measurements of the tensile strength.
¾ Removing the coating without injuring the glass surface of the PCF and cleaning it
¾ Partially straight collapse of the PCF to fracture the fiber in a controlled manner and (Fig. 5, left) for a cleaving
angle better than 0.5 degree in reference to the fiber axis
¾ Cleaving very close to the end of the collapsed region [Fig. 5, right]
The cleaved fibers evinced a collapsed range smaller than 100µm, which were checked with the side view camera of our
CO2-laser splicing device. Due to the surface absorption of the 10.6µm wavelength and the following heat transfer by
heat conduction the air holes in the pump clad and in the air-clad do not collapse in the same manner (Fig. 5).

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 Figure 5. Differences in the partially straight collapse in a processed passive PCF (left) and unused part after cleaving (right)
Our laser splicing process with an off-axis angle of about 20 degree for the rotating laser beam enables an adjustment of
the collapse of the different air hole regions as displayed in Fig. 6. The reduction of the collapse width from left to right
is shown and will demonstrate the impact on the tensile strength. Also the filet weld becomes smaller which implicates a
reduction of the mechanical stability.

Figure 6. Impact of air holes collapse for the passive PCF when using different parameter sets
Fusion splicing of components with diverse glass composition and additional different diameters with high yield is hard
to achieve with conventional splice equipment. In contrast to all conventional fusion splicers the off-axis angle as well as
the controlled defocus of the incident CO2-laser beams enables a more precise melting of the end cap. The air hole
microstructure in the PCF, especially the holes defining the single mode core, need to be preserved for light guiding and
mode quality, which will be achieved by decreasing the heat. Thereby the question of the achievable tensile strength
comes up.
A standard fusion strength test of a fiber-fiber splice is performed with two rotary mandrels. If the fibers are coiled on
the mandrels with the splice in a straight line a tensile force is applied [2]. But PCFs are very susceptible to small
bending radii. Additionally difficulties are expected to grip PCF and end caps without any torsion or bending. So we
used the successfully tested approach as described in [1] again. The following picture shows a short piece [~300mm] of
PCF with two spliced end caps arranged in a pull strength test machine (Instron). The range of measurements is for the
small load cell up to 100N or 2000N for the large load cell. In some cases a second test was necessary with the larger
load cell. However the achieved forces were a lot lower than in the first test. We assume a preliminary damage caused by
the first pull test.

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 Figure 7. Pull test assembling for the passive PCF
The results are presented in the following table 1. The breaking forces vary between 20 MPa and 230 MPa (2.9 kpsi and
33.3 kpsi). We could not find any published results for proof tests of PCF-end cap fusion splices with CO2-laser. [3]
Bourliaguet et al. describes a splicing of micro-structured fibers (MOF with 125 µm) with electric-arc. He presents
tensile strength for MOF-standard single-mode fiber splices between 20 kpsi and approximately 100 kpsi. An applied
tensile stress of 100 kpsi is a typical value for a standard proof test. But a comparison with a conventional fiber-fiber
splice is not suitable due to the different cross-section sizes, structures and different volumes of PCF with a diameter of
about 830 µm in comparison to an end cap (diameter: 10 mm, thickness: 5 mm). Further the laser does not melt the
whole end cap. Otherwise the air holes would collapse over a long width due to the heat conductivity after the joining of
both components.

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 Table 1. Proof test results for the passive PCF

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 Figure 8. Tensile loads versus air hole collapse width in the inner cladding for the passive PCF
As we can see, there is a mutual dependence between the tensile load and the collapse of the air holes in the air-clad as
well as for the pump holes. To obtain an impression of the valency, further investigations have been performed. In
general, completely shattered fiber tips of fiber-fiber splicing at high tensile load cannot be analyzed. However in our
case we could use the fractured PCF-end cap splices for further investigations.
This break-down from the end cap surface is significant for PCF-end cap splices broken at low pull forces less than about
50 N. The depth of this hollowed area is in a range of 100 µm and 200 µm. The end cap in example of Fig. 9 has a fiber
footprint with a depth of about 120 µm and a slightly increased diameter of about 930 µm (original diameter of PCF:
830 µm). By increasing the pull force and the collapse width the fractured position in the splice moves towards the fiber.
Fig. 10 shows two broken splices with small pieces of joined fiber at the end cap after the pull test. The heights of the
fiber tips remaining on the end cap are about some millimetre. However these values do not match well with the
occurred collapse. Both fibers, each equipped with two end caps, showed a collapse width larger than 200 µm for the
pump holes and at least 380 µm for the air clad. This collapse corresponds to the left of the four PCF-end cap splices in
Fig. 6. A relative long fiber range of the microstructure is completely collapsed with a distinctive filet weld. The
characteristic filet weld was identified for a high mechanical stability in [1]. These results have been obtained with a low
gradient during the splicing process.

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 Figure 9. Laser scanning microscope image after the pull test hollowed area at the former fiber position on the end cap, in
the left upper corner light microscope image with the same part of the end cap
There is another issue, which could have an influence on the occurred tensile strength results. The high temperatures for
fiber and end cap melting over a relative short duration can produce thermally induced stress. In general this stress
causes fractures near to the splice interface in a range of some millimetre. This small fiber part is exposed to highest
temperature gradients. A reduction of the thermal stress is reachable if the applied laser power can be gradually adjusted
over a specific range of the glass viscosity, especially around the annealing point of the applied glass fibers. Further
experiments with this approach are planned.

Figure 10. After the pull test fiber tips remaining on the end cap
2.2 Beam quality investigations
The beam quality has been analyzed with an M² measurement device from Spiricon Inc. Now we used our active PCF in
an assembly with a narrow band fiber laser at 1080 nm. The laser was coupled in a short piece (~0.5 m) of active PCF
equipped with a spliced end cap. As mentioned above this fiber has an M² of 1.4. A PCF-end cap splice with different
collapse width should decrease the beam quality. For our first experiment the collapse width was close to zero with a
measured value M² of around 1.42 and subsequent degradation with larger collapse. Detailed results will be presented.

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 3. OUTLOOK
The CO2-laser is a versatile tool for glass processing of optical waveguides and beyond that. Further improvements will
be done in the near future: An additional capillary surrounding the fiber will increase the area that has to be spliced but
might increase the mechanical strength and protects the fiber against, for instance, shear forces. In high power
applications an etched mode stripper on the fiber cladding inside or outside the capillary can be realized for removing
unwanted cladding light. In some cases a laser polishing process can be utilized for a better mechanical stability of that
etched section, which is compatible to the setup presented here. Furthermore, the application of a short-pulsed high
repetition rate laser system for joining optical fibers with capillary and/or end caps is desired [4], potentially alone but
also in combination with the CO2 processing.

4. SUMMARY
The paper presents investigations of a CO2-laser fusion splicing device applied on two different PCFs. The link between
collapse width, mechanical stability and resulting beam quality has been demonstrated. A defined collapse process with
the same splicing equipment supports the following cleave and joining tasks. The off-axis angle of the defocused
incident laser beam together with large working offers an excellent heat distribution on the joining components without
any contaminations for different geometries or cross sections.

REFERENCES

[1] Boehme, S., Beckert, E., Eberhardt, R., Tuennermann, A., “Laser splicing of end caps – process requirements in
high power laser applications“, Proc. SPIE 7202, 2009
[2] Yablon, A. D., “Optical Fiber Fusion Splicing”, Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2005
[3] Bourliaguet, B. Pare, C., Edmond, F., Croteau, A., "Microstructured fiber splicing" Opt. Express Vol. 11, No. 25,
3412 – 3417, 2003
[4] S. Richter, S. Döring, A. Tünnermann und S. Nolte, „Bonding of glass with femtosecond laser pulses at high
repetition rates,” Applied Physics A: Materials Science & Processing, Vol.103, 2, 257-261

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