Lensed plastic optical fiber employing hyperbolic end filled with high-index resin using electrostatic force

•We design the lens-like structure on the tip of fiber.•Using the electrostatic force to form the shape of lens.•Shrinkage rate of volume in lens.•Coupling efficiency of hemispherical LPOF.

The step-index (SI) and graded-index (GI) plastic optical fibers (POFs) are strong candidates for short-distance transmission, fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) networks, automobile applications and interchip interconnections. The GI POFs which has been proven to reach distances as long as 1 km at 1.25 Gb/s has a relatively low NA. Therefore, the efficient coupling of GI POFs to the light source has become critical to the power budget in the system. Forming a lens-like structure directly on the fiber end is preferred for simplicity of fabrication and packaging, such as polishing and fusion, combing different fibers with the cascaded fiber method and hydroflouride (HF) chemical etching. These approaches are well established, but applicable only to glass. This work proposes a novel structure of a lensed plastic optical fiber (LPOF). The fabrication of the LPOF is demonstrated and the coupling efficiency exceeds 72%.