Fiber Optic Tapers are used in many applications including: Intensified Low Light Level Cameras, Night Vision Systems, UV/IR Spectroscopy and Medical, Industrial and Scientific X- Ray Imaging systems. In these applications, the taper is coupled to a CCD imager in order to increase the area that can be imaged. With rare exceptions, the tapers are under 85mm diameter, the majority being 50mm diameter or less. There is, however, a need for tapers in the 150mm to 200mm range, in Medical and Scientific application, where larger and higher resolution images are required. Progress, however, has been restricted due to the relatively small size of CCD's and non-availability of large tapers. To overcome this, smaller tapers have been built into arrays and coupled to multiple CCD's. this is a costly and inefficient arrangement. Prior to Phase I, limitations of existing taper technology had restricted the size attempted to 115mm. Only a few of these costly units had been made, many manufacturing problems remaining unsolved, especially optical distortion and thermal damage to the glass. New technology developed at INCOM was applied to these problems during Phase I demonstrating that many existing limitations can be overcome. Given additional research, the development of a completely new manufacturing process enabling the fabrication of Large Tapers is possible. Thus, we propose to continue to advance the state of the art by conducting additional research on the more complex and larger tapers required for the advancement of this element of Electro-Optical Imaging Technology.
