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POF - Processing

• Preform Heating
• Fiber Drawing
• Heating Instabilities
• Unsteady Natural Convection

Why Polymer Optical Fiber?

Polymer optical fiber (POF) is a potential solution for local area networks (LAN), residential networks, and automotive applications due to low connection costs. The cost for each POF connection is approximately 1/100th the cost of a glass fiber connection. This is because polymers are more flexible than glass and so POF can be manufactured with larger diameters. Also, polymers allow for a wide range of refractive indices, which means that POF can be designed with a larger numerical aperture (NA) compared to the NA of glass fiber. Larger diameter fiber and NA translate into less stringent requirements for alignment and therefore lower cost for each connection. POF has been demonstrated to achieve high-bandwidth (>2 GHz.km), but it attenuates the light signal more strongly than glass fiber does. POF is therefore most applicable for short-range networks where many connections make it cost advantageous.

Polymer Optical Fiber Manufacturing

As shown in below, optical fiber is produced by a drawing process. A large diameter preform is heated in a furnace by natural convection and thermal radiation. When the preform is sufficiently hot, it necks-down under its own weight. After the lower end is removed, tension is continuously applied to draw optical fiber.

The quality of POF is dependent on the manufacturing conditions. In particular, variations in the final fiber diameter and residual stresses from drawing can affect the fiber's optical preformance. To minimize these effects research has been carried out in order to understand the heat and mass transfer phenomena associated with the initial preform heating and the steady-state fiber drawing.