UV-curable adhesive microsphere whispering gallery mode resonators

Abstract

We report the fabrication and optical characterization of spherical whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonators made from ultraviolet (UV)-curable adhesive. The fabricated microspheres have good sphericity and surface smoothness, and can directly adhere to the tip of half-tapered fibers for easy manipulation. WGMs are efficiently excited in the microsphere using an evanescent field of the tapered silica optical fibers. Resonances with quality factors of 1.3×105 are observed. The dependence of wavelength shifts of WGM resonances on the input light powers shows that the resonant wavelength of the proposed microsphere resonators can be tuned thermo-optically. © 2013 Chinese Optics Letters.