Side Polished Fiber:A Versatile Platform for Compact Fiber Devices and Sensors

Side polished fiber(SPF)has a controllable average roughness and length of the side-polishing region,which becomes a versatile platform for integrating multiple materials to interact with the evanescent field to fabricate all-fiber devices and sensors.It has been widely used in couplers,filters,polarizers,optical attenuators,photodetectors,modulators,and sensors for temperature,humidity,strain,biological molecules,chemical gas,and vector magnetic monitoring.In this article,an overview of the development history,fabrication techniques,fiber types,transmission characteristics,and varied recent applications of SPFs are reviewed.Firstly,the fabrication techniques of SPFs are reviewed,including the V-groove assisted polishing technique and wheel polishing technique.Then,the different types of SPFs and their characteristics are discussed.Finally,various applications of SPFs are discussed and concluded theoretically and experimentally,including their principles and structures.When designing the device,the residual thickness and polishing lengths of the SPF need to be appropriately selected in order to obtain the best performance.Developing all-fiber devices and sensors is aimed at practical usability under harsh environments and allows to avoid the high coupling loss between optical fibers and on-chip integrated devices.

High-performance fiber-integrated multifunctional graphene-optoelectronic device with photoelectric detection and optic-phase modulation

In graphene-based optoelectronic devices,the ultraweak interaction between a light and monolayer graphene leads to low optical absorption and low responsivity for the photodetectors and relative high half-wave voltage for the phase modulator.Here,an integration of the monolayer graphene onto the side-polished optical fiber is demonstrated,which is capable of providing a cost-effective strategy to enhance the light–graphene interaction,allowing us to obtain a highly efficient optical absorption in graphene and achieve multifunctions:photodetection and optical phase modulation.As a photodetector,the device has ultrahigh responsivity(1.5×10^(7) A/W)and high external quantum efficiency(>1.2×10^(9)%).Additionally,the polybutadiene/polymethyl methacrylate(PMMA)film on the graphene can render the device an optical phase modulator through the large thermo-optic effect of the PMMA.As a phase modulator,the device has a relatively low half-wave voltage of 3 V with a 16 dB extinction ratio in Mach–Zehnder interferometer configuration.

Distance-controllable and direction-steerable opto-conveyor for targeting delivery

Opto-conveyors have attracted widespread interest in various fields because of their non-invasive and non-contact delivery of micro/nanoparticles.However,the flexible control of the delivery distance and the dynamic steering of the delivery direction,although very desirable in all-optical manipulation,have not yet been achieved by optoconveyors.Here,using a simple and cost-effective scheme of an elliptically focused laser beam obliquely irradiated on a substrate,a direction-steerable and distance-controllable opto-conveyor for the targeting delivery of microparticles is implemented.Theoretically,in the proposed scheme of the opto-conveyor,the transverse and longitudinal resultant forces of the optical gradient force and the optical scattering force result in the transverse confinement and the longitudinal transportation of microparticles,respectively.In this study,it is experimentally shown that the proposed opto-conveyor is capable of realizing the targeting delivery for microparticles.Additionally,the delivery distance of microparticles can be flexibly and precisely controlled by simply adjusting the irradiation time.By simply rotating the cylindrical lens,the proposed opto-conveyor is capable of steering the delivery direction flexibly within a large range of azimuthal angles,from-75°to 75°.This study also successfully demonstrated the real-time dynamic steering of the delivery direction from-45°to 45°with the dynamical rotation of the cylindrical lens.Owing to its simplicity,flexibility,and controllability,the proposed method is capable of creating new opportunities in bioassays as well as in drug delivery.