A positioning device for accurately positioning an array of multimode
fibers with a cladding diameter of 125-140 mu m is described in this p
aper. The device has grooved sidewalls adapted to hold 16 fibers and i
ncludes a vacuum chamber communicating with openings in the beddings.
It may be used to align a complete array of fibers in a single operati
on with respect to an array of elements such as lasers. A typical coup
ling-loss difference of 0.5 dB has been achieved for the alignment of
an eight-element 140 mu m multimode fiber array with a laser array. Th
is positioning device is part of the tooling, therefore is reusable. E
xperiments show that it is suitable and flexible for the alignment of
multimode fibers in lasers, and is a cost-effective device.