Passive and portable polymer optical fiber cleaver

Abstract

Polymer optical fiber (POF) is a growing technology in short distance telecommunication due to its flexibility, easy connectorization, and lower cost than the mostly deployed silica optical fiber technology. Microstructured POFs (mPOFs) have particular promising potential applications in the sensors and telecommunications field, and they could specially help to reduce losses in polymer fibers by using hollow-core fibers or reduce the modal dispersion by providing a large mode area endlessly single-mode. However, mPOFs are intrinsically more difficult to cut due to the cladding hole structure and it becomes necessary to have a high quality POF cleaver. In the well-known hot-blade cutting process, fiber and blade are heated, which requires electrical components and increases cost. A new method has recently been identified, allowing POF to be cut without the need for heating the blade and fiber, thus opening up the possibility of an electrically passive cleaver. In this letter, we describe the implementation and testing of a high quality cleaver based on a mechanical system formed by a constant force spring and a damper, which leads to the first reported electrical passive and portable cleaver.