Graduation Year

2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.M.S.E.

Degree Name

MS in Materials Science and Engineering (M.S.M.S.E)

Degree Granting Department

Chemical Engineering

Major Professor

Venkat Bhethanabotla, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Thomas Weller, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Zhimin Shi, Ph.D.

Keywords

Fused Deposition Modeling, Micro-dispensing, Surface Flatness, Transmission Loss

Abstract

This thesis mainly focuses on the realization of laser enhancing additive manufactured optical fibers on the flexible substrate based on previous work on the rigid surface, and the exploration of their loss at different bend status by optical transmission test. Optical fibers are successfully fabricated using polymethyl methacrylate by fused deposition modeling technology within Norland Optical Adhesive 1369 which is chosen as the cladding material and micro-dispensed on the Kapton substrate. The Laser cutting technology and scanning electron microscope have been used to enhance and characterize the flatness of two end facets of samples, respectively. The optical adhesive and PMMA core are perpendicularly cut by the Lumera Super-Rapid industrial high repetition rate picosecond laser with a wavelength at 355 nm using the different number of cut times and output power. The flatness of these end facets is compared after observation under SEM and the optimum laser-cut parameters for our fibers on the flexible substrate have been found as cutting 2 times with power output at 1400 mW. The fibers are cut to be 50 mm long and tested to see their properties against loss while undergoing different bend angles. As the bend radius decreases, the loss is found slowly increasing from approximate 0.4 – 0.8 dB/cm which represents the straight situation for different samples. And a bend radius range from 30 to 80 mm is found that loss will dramatically climb to around 2.5 – 3.2 dB/cm.

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