Polymers beyond standard optical fibres – fabrication of microstructured polymer optical fibres

Abstract

This paper reports the overall fabrication process of microstructured polymer optical fibres (mPOFs). mPOF fabrication involves a two-step process: on the one hand, the design and creation of a preform containing a large-scale version of the desired fibre and, on the other, the precise heating and drawing of the preform to the final fibre. The preforms are produced either by an improved drilling technique or by capillary stacking. For a correct and accurate drawing of the fibre, a controlled and precise heating unit has to be designed, an issue that will be explained in detail in this work. The quality and optical performance of the final mPOF depends strongly on key factors such as the preform annealing, the accuracy of the technique selected for the creation of the preform structure, the heating stage, as well as on the drawing parameters. All of them are analysed in detail and some drawn mPOFs of interest are reported as well.

Fabrication of Active Polymer Optical Fibers by Solution Doping and Their Characterization

“…They were annealed in a C-70/200 climate chamber (Controltecnia-CTS, Hechingen, Germany) for 7 days at a temperature of 90 °C under low relative humidity. Afterwards, they were drawn into only core fibers of 500 μm in diameter using our own POF drawing tower, which enabled us to control the fiber diameter with an accuracy of ±1% [16]. The refractive-index profile of the fibers was step-index in all cases.…”

Exploring Low Loss and Single Mode in Antiresonant Tube Lattice Terahertz Fibers

“…The possible fabrication techniques for terahertz HC-ARF are stacking [25], [26], 3D printing [31] and extrusion [27]. The stack and drawn technique can collapse and deform the antiresoanat tube.…”

Liquid-Core Microstructured Polymer Optical Fiber as Fiber-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy Probe for Glucose Sensing

“…LC-mPOF probes must fulfill some special conditions for FERS measurements that, in spite of being conceptually simple, are not easily met and, consequently, a lot of experience in mPOF fabrication is required [22]. On the one hand, the diameter of the central hole has to be big enough so as to be filled by the solution containing the target sample.…”

“…2) Fiber Drawing: Afterwards, the drilled preform was drawn employing a two-step process [22]. In the first one, the preform was stretched to a 3-mm-diameter intermediate cane ( Fig.…”