Abang Annuar EHSAN, Sahbudin SHAARI, and Mohd Kamil ABD. RAHMAN¹

Institute of Microengineering and Nanoelectronics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 UKM, Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia
¹Faculty of Applied Science, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 40450 Shah Alam, Selangor, Malaysia

(Received May 31, 2010; Accepted October 14, 2010)

We proposed a simple low-cost acrylic and metal-based Y-branch plastic optical fiber (POF) splitter which utilizes a low cost optical polymer glue NOA63 as the main waveguiding medium at the waveguide taper region. The device is composed of three sections: an input POF waveguide, a middle waveguide taper region and output POF waveguides. A desktop high speed CNC engraver is utilized to produce the mold inserts used for the optical devices. Short POF fibers are inserted into the engraved slots at the input and output ports. UV curable optical polymer glue NOA63 is injected into the waveguide taper region and cured. The assembling is completed when the top plate is positioned to enclose the device structure and connecting screws are secured. Both POF splitters have an average insertion loss of 7.8 dB, coupling ratio of 55:45 and 57:43 for the acrylic and metal-based splitters respectively. The devices have excess loss of 4.82 and 4.73 dB for the acrylic and metal-based splitters respectively.

Key words: optical polymer, plastic optical fiber, POF, splitter, Y-branch, waveguide taper