Key technologies for side-grinding optical fiber with long-length and high-precision and their applications

An optical fiber side-grinding device with controllable and high-precision grinding thickness,and a setup for high-precision polishing of the optical fiber section by using an arc discharge method were self-made.The precision of side-grinding could reach to 0.01 μm by adjusting the side grinding thickness controlled by a high-precision piezoelectric ceramics(PZT).The side-grinding length was longer than 100 mm that was controlled by a position sensor.The grinding loss could be decreased greatly by using the oxyfluoride glass with low thermal expansion coefficient as grinding material,and multi-fibers could be grinded at the same time,thus the grinding efficiency was increased greatly.The fiber section was polished with arc discharge,and the loss caused by fiber micro-crack and concave pit would be eliminated effectively.By using the above devices,the side-grinding thickness of optical fiber is controllable and this technique will become the groundworks of the fabrication of birefringence polarization-maintaining fiber Bragg grating(PMF-FBG) with controllable precision and a wavelength division demultiplexer based on the FBG coupler.