Practical experience in joining of silica microstructured and telecommunication optical fibers by using field arc fusion splicer kits

This work presents the results of a series of fusion splices, performed for silica microstructured optical fibers (MOFs) with conventional optical fibers of ITU-T Recommendations by commercially available kits. We tested the following earlier on designed and fabricated three types of MOFs with various configurations, and all of them have outer “telecommunication” diameter 125 μm: six-GeO₂-doped core MOF, MOF with centralized inclusion of seven GeO₂- doped capillaries and MOF with equiangular spiral six-ray geometry. Short segment of each type of MOF was spliced between two pig-tails or spools with standard single mode (SMF) or multimode optical fibers (MMF) by using various types of commercially available arc fusion splicer kits and standard “AUTO” program without any modifications of arc current or arc time. Depending on the length of SMF/MMF (pig-tail vs spool), the total insertion loss (two splices and MOF attenuation) was measured by optical power meters or by optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR). The results of described above experiments confirmed the possibility of joining silica MOFs and MMFs by field arc fusion splicers in “AUTO” mode under preserving optical emission guiding properties and achieving an acceptable insertion loss, that provides to utilize them in various testing setups with conventional measurement equipment.