Alignment of optical building elements

Abstract

When finely aligning an optical fiber, attached in groove of a carrier, with a surface area of an optical element such as a laser, the plate-shaped carrier is plastically deformed by having suitable tools displace or act on the carrier at the end of the fiber, within a deformation region. For facilitating the plastic deformation slots are made around the deformation region, so that a weakened area is obtained quite at the end surface of the fiber. The fine alignment can be made either for correcting the position of erroneously mounted optical building elements or for a fine alignment of building elements, which have beer mounted without necessarily trying to achieve a very high accuracy. The very alignment procedure can be executed when simultaneously measuring the efficiency of the interface, by activating the laser to emit light into the optical fiber. This light can be detected by a light detector, so that the deformation process can be made in order to obtain maximum output power at the end of the fiber. The material of the carrier can be a metal having a high degree of purity, for example copper plate of a small thickness. The fine alignment procedure as described provides advantages both in economy and in the degree of accuracy in the alignment operation, so that little attenuation is obtained in the interface between the building elements in the finished product. The carrier together with the building elements is intended for being moulded into a capsule in order to obtain an optical component suited to be mounted on a circuit board.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.