Borosilicate Fiber Bundles

Borosilicate optical fiber is an efficient, effective method for moving light when reliability and cost are your key concerns. Our partner, Gulf Photonics, has been drawing its own borosilicate fibers for over 20 years. This experience ensures that we can custom configure bundles to fit any application. From complex medical applications to custom probes, we have seen it all. Whether your application needs just a few fibers or has a high degree of complexity, our team can make it happen.

Many application needs can be met with less expensive borosilicate glass fiber assemblies. This fiber transmits well in the visible, from 380-1700nm. Borosilicate glass fiber is typically small in diameter (<100um), with a thin cladding and no buffer. This allows it to be more flexible and have a very tight bend radius – perfect for small spaces.

The high core to cladding ratio makes borosilicate fiber ideal for tight packing into bundles, as seen to the right. Bundles can contain hundreds to thousands of single fibers, maximizing light collection and transmission, and offering valuable redundancy in case of fiber breakage.

Borosilicate fiber also boasts a larger numerical aperture, making it well-suited to spectroscopy and sensing applications requiring efficient light collection. Bundle geometries can be customized to the application, with each termination uniquely matching the object to which it is mated – a narrow slit, a round LED, or a series of legs routed to different sampling locations.

We have 35um and 50um diameter fiber available, with numerical apertures of 0.55 and 0.66.

The large number of fibers used in a borosilicate fiber bundle makes it ideal for light manipulation. A multi-legged assembly can be built such that the input from each leg is evenly distributed across the bundle area (randomized), thus mixing light from different sampling points (or sources of different wavelength) without the use of a diffusing element and its associated attenuation. Conversely, the light can be carefully mapped, with input from each leg routing to a different part of the bundle or slit.  Contact us if you think borosilicate may be an option for your application.