The Fabrication of a Photonic Crystal Fiber and Measurement of its Properties

In this paper, we describe the fabrication process of a photonic crystal fiber and present the measured optical properties of the photonic crystal fiber. The fabrication of the photonic crystal fiber involves stacking, jacketing, collapsing, and drawing using a conventional drawing tower The photonic crystal fiber drawing needs higher tension to maintain the uniform air hole structure. Thus, the temperature of the photonic crystal fiber drawing is lowered by a few hundred degrees Celsius than for the case of conventional optical fiber drawing. The optical properties of the fabricated photonic crystal fiber such as mode profile, optical loss, transmission spectrum, bending loss, and polarization dependent loss are measured.