The ability to be fusion-spliced to both pump and signal fibers with low-loss is perhaps the most important characteristic of any erbium doped fiber. A bad splice can reduce efficiency by wasting valuable pump energy and increase noise through amplified back-reflection.

The splice behaviour of IsoGain™ has been evaluated extensively and the results are excellent - with typical losses of better than 0.10 and 0.20 dB when spliced to 980 nm and 1550 nm fibers, respectively. These figures have been confirmed for many of the market-leading fusion splicers.

The exceptionally flat gain characteristics of IsoGain™ are due to the high concentration of alumina within its core. This high concentration also changes the fusion characteristics of the fiber by making the optical mode expand far more rapidly during the splicing process than in other erbium doped fibers. So, the general rule when splicing IsoGain™ is to reduce the splice energy by reducing the fusion power and/or duration.

These graphs show composite results for the following market-leading machines - full programs and reports are attached.