Optical fiber coupling member, method of producing the same and method of connecting optical fibers

摘要

The present invention provides a connecting member for facilitating connecting of optical fibers and optical fiber ribbons, and a connecting method by fusion splicing in which the loss due to connecting is small. An optical fiber connecting member (e.g. a glass rod) is composed of: a retaining portion (2) having through-holes (4) each of which has an inner diameter slightly larger than the outer diameter of optical fibers to be connected; and introduction portions (3) which are integrally formed with and on the opposite end sides of the retaining portion and each of which has introduction grooves (5) communicated with the through-holes to thereby make it easy to insert ends of the optical fibers into the through-holes. Further, the inner diameter of each of the through-holes is reduced by heating the connecting member to thereby make axis alignment of the optical fibers automatically to obtain connecting in which the connecting loss is reduced.