All fiber N × N fused tapered plastic optical fiber (POF) power splitters for photodynamic therapy applications

Abstract

We fabricated various types of plastic optical fiber (POF) fused taper N × N splitters (N = 4, 6, 8, 10, 20, 30, and 60). Inert gas was electrically heated and injected through a nozzle to provide an oxygen-free hot zone to process PMMA POF fused taper. The devices showed unique splitting characteristic to provide a dominant direct output port along with N - 1 weakly coupled output ports, which might have a significant potential in photodynamic therapy applications. © 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.