Abstract

We present a method to build an optical tip at the end of a single-mode optical fiber. The tip is grown by a self-writing process: photopolymerization by the light coming from the optical fiber. We developed a technique to produce a flat end surface on the tip. The good optical quality of the tip and the output laser beam was demonstrated by the fact that a counterpropagating optical trap could be constructed by using the tips with parameters comparable to regular fiber traps. Because of the small size of the tips, the tweezers require a much smaller space than regular fiber traps.

© 2009 Optical Society of America

Coupling semiconductor lasers into single-mode optical fibers by use of tips grown by photopolymerization

Renaud Bachelot, Abdesslame Fares, Radouane Fikri, Dominique Barchiesi, Gilles Lerondel, and Pascal Royer
Opt. Lett. 29(17) 1971-1973 (2004)

Graded-index fiber tip optical tweezers: Numerical simulation and trapping experiment

Yuan Gong, Ai-Yan Ye, Yu Wu, Yun-Jiang Rao, Yao Yao, and Song Xiao
Opt. Express 21(13) 16181-16190 (2013)

Single and dual fiber nano-tip optical tweezers: trapping and analysis

Jean-Baptiste Decombe, Serge Huant, and Jochen Fick
Opt. Express 21(25) 30521-30531 (2013)

Optical fiber nano-tip and 3D bottle beam as non-plasmonic optical tweezers

Samir K. Mondal, Sudipta Sarkar Pal, and Pawan Kapur
Opt. Express 20(15) 16180-16185 (2012)

Integration of micrometer-sized polymer elements at the end of optical fibers by free-radical photopolymerization

Renaud Bachelot, Carole Ecoffet, Denis Deloeil, Pascal Royer, and Daniel-Joseph Lougnot
Appl. Opt. 40(32) 5860-5871 (2001)