A Molded-Plastic Technique for Connecting and Splicing Optical-Fiber Tapesand Cables

July-August 1975 Telephone and Telegraph Company. Printed in Number 6 U.S.A. A Molded-Plastic Technique for Connecting and Splicing Optical-Fiber Tapes and Cables By P. W. SMITH, D. L. BISBEE, D. GLOGE, and E. L. CHINNOCK (Manuscript received September 25, 1974) We describe a new technique for optical-fiber cable connecting and splicing. Preliminary tests with multimode fibers produced splices with, an average loss of less than 0.1 dB and a peak loss of 0.18 dB. I. INTRODUCTION Despite the efforts of many investigators, 1-12 the problem of connecting and splicing optical-fiber cables and subgroups of fibers13 (tapes) has remained a serious one. The continued improvement of optical fibers to the point where losses approaching 1 dB/km have now been achieved14 has made it increasingly apparent that practical connectors and splices should have losses much lower than those initially considered. Someda 4 demonstrated a splicing technique in which individual fibers are aligned by pressing them into a grooved substrate. Much subsequent work has involved extensions and improvements of this idea. Miller 9 used precision-grooved aluminum spacers and prepared the fiber ends by grinding and polishing. Cherin10 used embossed grooves and devised a jig for inserting tapes with previously prepared fiber ends into these grooves. The lowest losses in splices based on this technique were obtained by Chinnock et al.,12 who prepared the ends of the fibers using a fiber-fracture technique. 7 All these methods, however, have drawbacks resulting either from difficulties associated 971 with the preparation of the fiber ends or with the mechanical alignment of the previously prepared ends.