Deposition of Piezoelectric Films on Single-Mode Fibers and Applications to Fiber Modulators

Techniques are described by which an oriented, piezoelectric zinc oxide film is sputtered directly on one side of an 80-pm-diameter fused silica single-mode fiber. These techniques have been used to fabricate piezoelectric transducers in the GHz frequency range. Acoustic t ransducers fabri cated directly on a fiber produce fields focused on the fiber core for efficient acousto-optic interaction, making possible many new all-fiber modulators and taps. An all-fiber phase modulator with a center frequency of approximately 850 MHz is demons t ra t ed. 0.5-5