Abstract

Photosensitivity in silica fibre was first revealed by Hill et al in 1978,¹ then the fiber Bragg gratings based on this photosensitivity has been directed into the fiber for many important applications in optical communication systems such as dispersion compensation, add-drop WDM multiplexing, and optical sensing etc.^2–5 However, the tuning range in the Bragg wavelength for silica fiber due to temperature and strain change is only several nanometers,⁶ which is far less than the bandwidth requirements for WDM systems. Our researches have showed that Bragg gratings can be written on Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) based polymer optical fibres.⁷ Further it is demonstrated that polymer fiber gratings have very high tunability in comparison with silica fiber gratings.⁸ A tuning range of 73 nm by strain variation⁹ and 18 nm by temperature change¹⁰ has been achieved in PMMA-based polymer fiber.

© 2002 Optical Society of America