Simple fabrication technique for novel multistructured flat fiber

Abstract A new and simple fabrication technique was successfully demonstrated in the fabrication of a novel multistructured flat fiber in the form of a doped flat fiber with dual airholes. This proof of concept fabrication technique uses only a drawing tower where an arrangement of solid rods and capillaries were attached inside a preform using a simple holder. The fabricated doped flat fiber with dual airholes had a dimension of 165 µm × 33 µm and the airhole diameter was 11.2 µm. Optical characterization demonstrated that the core had good light guiding capability with no light leaking to the adjunct of the cores as the capillaries in between the cores were not collapsed. The new fabrication technique is simple, cost-effective and allows a flexible core structure arrangement using glass rods and capillaries with different refractive indices. This flexibility allows a wide range of complex multistructured flat fibers to be fabricated and the ability to fabricate core dimensions with accuracy for future light guiding devices and optical sensor applications such as a biosensor that requires analyte to flow in the airholes.