Biconical fused taper : a universal fibre devices technology

The development of optical fibres has resulted in a range of components fully compatible to the optical network. The number of such devices is steadily growing. Fibre connectors, couplers, multi- and demultiplexers, filters, polarisers, sensors, amplifiers, lasers and superluminescent diodes made of cylindrical fibres are widely used in optical telecomunication and sensor networks. Only the light detectors cannot be found in the fibre form yet. The revue and some recent applications are given for biconical fused fibre taper techniques. The variety of experimental solutions of taper designs in the Institute of Electronic Systems (ISE), Warsaw University of Technology is presented.