Additive Manufacturing of Optical Waveguides

Abstract

Optical waveguides play an important role in both scientific research and industrial applications. Additive manufacturing (AM) or three-dimensional (3D)-printing technology has great potential to revolutionize manufacturing of optical waveguides. AM offers a great opportunity in developing optical waveguides demanding new material compositions and structure designs for functionalities needed in fast-evolving modern applications such as Internet of things (IoT). These demands have become so diverse and sophisticated that the traditional waveguide manufacturing cannot meet. In this chapter, we briefly introduce optical fibers one of the most common typical optical waveguides and present the process and perspective of optical fiber fabrication by AM technology.