Patent 9484706 was granted and assigned to NLight on November, 2016 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Tapered core fibers are produced using tapered core rods that can be etched or ground so that a fiber cladding has a constant diameter. The tapered core can be an actively doped core, or a passive core. One or more sleeving tubes can be collapsed onto a tapered core rod and exterior portions of the collapsed sleeving tubes can be ground to provide a constant cladding diameter in a fiber drawn from the preform.