Masashige Mitsuhashi

New mirror-finish surface-grinding technology for the fabrication of optical device endfaces

This paper describes a mirror-finish slicing technology, and a spherical mirror-finish surface grinding technology. The former technology uses a thin metal bond micro-grain blade to which an electrolytic dressing is applied, for use with optical waveguide device endfaces. The latter technology uses a concave surface of metal bond micro-grain grinding wheel with electrolytic dressing, which produces convex spherical ferrule endfaces for Physical Control optical fiber connectors. They successfully produce mirror-finish endfaces of 0.06 micrometers Rmax directly, without the need for lapping. Endfaces produced with these technologies have sufficiently high optical light transmission characteristics.