The fiber gratings fabrication technology with the heating method in a photonic crystal fiber (PCF) based on structural change is examined. The principle of photonic crystal fiber gratings (PCFGs) is analyzed in theory. The heat transfer theory and finite element method are used to examine the thermal field distribution in the fiber and the influence of the air hole structure in the cladding, and the parameters of the laser beam in the process of grating fabrication are discussed. The results show that gratings can be formed by the periodic collapse of air holes in the cladding of PCFs. Under double-point heating condition, the energy is uniformly distributed in the radial direction and is approximate to Gaussian distribution in the axial direction. With the same size of the luminous spot, as the layers and radius of the air holes increase, the laser power needed to make the air holes collapse decreases. With the same laser power, as the luminous spot radius increases, the needed heating time increases. Moreover, the relationship between the laser power needed and the air filling rate is obtained as the number of layers of the air holes changes from 1 to 7. This kind of PCFG can overcome the long-term thermal instability of conventional gratings in substance and thus has great potential applications in the related field of optical fiber sensors.
The paper studies a kind of improved photonic crystal fiber gratings fabricated by CO2 laser heating method. The effective refractive index of cladding induced by periodic air hole deformation is computed using multipole method, and the relationship between the effective refractive index and the collapse of air-holes is discussed, thereby the modulation expression of effective refractive index is obtained. The grating transmission characteristics are simulated. The results indicate that with the diameter of air-holes increasing from 3.3 mm to 3.7 mm, the resonance wavelength shows blue-shift, the resonance peak intensifies, and the bandwidth becomes narrow. As the collapse degree of cladding enhances, the resonance wavelength shows red-shift, the transmission increases, and the bandwidth tends to narrow.
