Pressure-assisted low-loss fusion splicing between photonic crystal fibers and single-mode fiber

We demonstrated a novel method of low-loss splicing photonic crystal fiber (PCF) and single-mode fiber (SMF) by conventional electric arc fusion splicer, in which the air with proper pressure is injecting into the PCFs holes to control the collapse ratio and then an optimum mode field match at the joint of SMF/PCF is realized. The experimental results show that the splice loss at 1550nm is ~0.40 dB and ~1.05dB for solid-core PCF/SMF and hollow-core PCF/SMF, respectively. This method could be widely used to fabricate PCF Devices.