AVS 49th International Symposium
    Photonic Materials Topical Conference Thursday Sessions
       Session PH-ThA

Invited Paper PH-ThA4
A New Generation of Plastic Optical Fiber

Thursday, November 7, 2002, 3:00 pm, Room C-111B

Session: Optical Lightguides
Presenter: W.R. White, OFS Laboratories
Authors: W.R. White, OFS Laboratories
L.L. Blyler, OFS Laboratories
R. Ratnagiri, OFS Laboratories
Correspondent: Click to Email
During the last few years, there have been revolutionary advances in plastic optical fiber (POF) technology as a result of fibers based on perfluorinated polymers, especially poly(perfluorobutenylvinylether), commercially known as CYTOP.@footnote 1,2@ Due to these new materials, the attenuation obtainable in POF has plummeted from 160 dB/km to less than 20 dB/km, and wide transmission windows have been opened in the commercially desirable wavelength range between 850 and 1300 nm. Moreover, graded-index POF(GI-POF) has been shown@footnote 3,4@ to have unexpectedly large bandwidths, due to subtle interplay between low material dispersion,@footnote 4,5@ high mode coupling,@footnote 4,5@ and differential mode attenuation.@footnote 6@ How can the remarkable properties of perfluorinated GI-POF be harnessed to deliver an extremely simple, longer reach, high bandwidth medium? To meet this goal, perfluorinated GI-POF must offer aspects of both older POF technologies and silica fiber technologies. From the POF tradition, it is important to retain simplicity of fiber termination and connector attachment. From the silica fiber tradition, we must replicate not only low attenuation and high bandwidths, but also low loss connectors and sophisticated cable designs. In this talk, I will discuss some highlights of our work to develop practical technologies for fabricating, cabling, terminating, and connectorizing perfluorinated GI-POF. @FootnoteText@ @footnote 1@ Y. Koike, Proceedings of ECOC '96, v.1 p.141 (1996). @footnote 2@ K. Koganezawa and T. Onishi, Proceedings of POF Conference 2000, p.19 (2000).@footnote 3@ G. Giaretta, W.R. White, M. Wegmuller, and T. Onishi, IEEE Photonics Tech. Lett., v.12, p.347 (2000).@footnote 4@ G. Giaretta, et al, Proceedings of ECOC '99 (1999)@footnote 5@ W. R. White, M. Dueser, W. A. Reed, and T. Onishi, IEEE Photonics Tech. Lett., v.11 p.997 (1999).@footnote 6@ T. Ishigure and Y. Koike, Proceedings of POF Conference 2000, p.14 (2000).