Coated fiber tips for optical instrumentation

Abstract

Compact optical systems can be fabricated by integrating coatings on fiber tips. Examples include fiber lasers, fiber interferometers, fiber Raman probes, fiber based spectrometers, and anti-reflected endoscopes. These interference filters are applied to exposed tips – either connectorized or cleaved. Coatings can also be immersed within glass by depositing on one tip and connecting to another uncoated tip. This paper addresses a fiber spectrometer for multispectral imaging - useful in several fields including biomedical scanning, flow cytometry, and remote sensing. Our spectrometer integrates serial arrays of reflecting fiber tips, delay lines between these elements, and a single element detector.