Optical transmittance degradation in tapered fibers

TL;DR

This paper investigates the causes of optical transmittance degradation in tapered fibers, identifying dust particles as the primary factor and demonstrating that a dust-free environment can significantly preserve transmittance.

Contribution

It provides a systematic analysis of environmental factors affecting tapered fiber degradation, highlighting dust particles as the main cause and proposing a method to preserve transmittance.

Findings

Dust particles are the main cause of degradation.

Humidity has negligible effect on transmittance degradation.

Transmittance can be maintained with minimal loss in dust-free environments.

Abstract

We investigated the cause of optical transmittance degradation in tapered fibers. Degradation commences immediately after fabrication and it eventually reduces the transmittance to almost zero. It is a major problem that limits applications of tapered fibers. We systematically investigated the effect of the dust-particle density and the humidity on the degradation dynamics. The results clearly show that the degradation is mostly due to dust particles and that it is not related to the humidity. In a dust free environment it is possible to preserve the transmittance with a degradation of less than the noise (+/- ?0.02) over 1 week.