Fiber Materials

Selection of Materials
A number of requirements must be satisfied for selecting material for optical fibres,
Must be possible to make long, thin, flexible fibres Must be transparent at a particular optical wavelength for the fiber to guide light efficiently Physically compatible materials having slightly different refractive indices for the core and cladding must be available.
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Selection of Materials
Majority of fibers are made of glass made of silica (SiO2) or a silicate
Available glass fibers ranges from high loss glass fibers with large cores used for short transmission distances to very transparent (low loss) fibers employed in long haul applications Plastic fibers are less widely used because of their higher attenuation than glass fibers
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 Plastic fibers are mainly used in short distance ( several hundred meters ) application and in abusive environments, where greater mechanical strength of plastic fibers offers an advantage over the use of glass fibers.

Glass Fibers
Glass is made by fusing mixtures of metal oxides, sulfides or selenides, resulting material is a randomly connected molecular network. A consequence of this random order is that glasses do not have well-defined melting points.
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Glass Fibers
Largest category of optically transparent glasses from which optical fibers are made consists of the oxide glasses. Most common is silica ( SiO2 ), which has a refractive index 1.458 at 850nm.

Glass Fibers
To produce two similar materials that differ in indices of refraction for the core and cladding, following is added to the silica,
GeO2 or P2O5 is added to increase the refractive index Fluorine or B2O3 is added to decrease the refractive index

 Examples:
GeO2 SiO2 Core ; SiO2 Cladding P2O5 - SiO2 Core ; SiO2 Cladding SiO2 Core ; B2O3 - SiO2 Cladding GeO2 B2O3 - SiO2 Core ; B2O3 - SiO2 Cladding

The raw material for silica is sand. Glass composed of pure silica is referred to as either silica glass, fused glass, or vitreous silica.
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 Desirable properties are:

Resistance to deformation at temp. as high as 1000C High resistance to breakage from thermal shock because of its low thermal expansion Good chemical durability High transparency in both visible and infrared regions
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 Disadvantage:
High melting temperature if the glass is prepared from a molten state

This problem is partially avoided when using vapor deposition techniques

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Halide Glass Fibers

Discovered in 1975 Fluoride glasses that have extremely low transmission losses at mid-infrared wavelengths (0.2 8 m with the lowest loss being around 2.55 m ) It is a heavy metal fluoride glass, using ZrF4 as the major component and glass network former.
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Halide Glass Fibers

Core of the glass fiber is made of,

Material ZrF4 BaF4 LaF3 AlF3 NaF

Molecular percentage 54 20 4.5 3.5 18

and is referred to as ZBLAN (after its elements)

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Halide Glass Fibers

To make lower refractive index glass, ZrF4 is partially replaced by HaF4 and is referred to as ZHBLAN cladding Advantage
Offers intrinsic minimum losses of 0.01 0.001 dB /km

Fabricating long lengths of these fibres is difficult

So ultrapure is used to reach low loss level Fluoride glass is prone to devitrification
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Active Glass Fibers

Incorporation of rare earth elements into a normally passive glass gives the resulting material new optical and magnetic properties These new properties allow the material to perform amplification, attenuation, and phase retardation on the light passing through it Doping can be carried out for both silica and halide glasses
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Active Glass Fibers

Commonly used materials for fiber laser are erbium and neodymium Ionic concentrations of these elements are low to avoid clustering effects By examining the absorption and fluorescence spectra of these materials, one can use an optical source which emits at an absorption wavelength to excite electrons to higher energy levels in the rare earth dopants And as these excited electrons drop to lower energy levels, they emit light in a narrow optical spectrum at the fluorescence wavelength
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Chalgenide Glass Fibers

Non linear properties of glass fibers can be exploited for applications such as alloptical switches and fiber lasers Chalgenide glass is one example for this This has high optical nonlinearity and its long interaction length These glasses contain at least one chalcogen element S, Se or Te
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Chalgenide Glass Fibers

And typically one other element such as P, I, Cl,Br, Cd, Ba, Si or Tl is added to tailor the thermal, mechanical and optical properties of the glass As2S3 is well known chalgenide glass Single mode fibers have been made using As40S58Se2 for the core and As2S3 for cladding Losses in these glasses typically range around 1 dB / m.
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Plastic Optical Fibers

High bandwidth graded index polymer ( plastic ) optical fibers (POF) have been developed for delivering high speed services directly to the workstation Core of the fiber is
Polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA POF) Or Perfluorinated Polymer ( PFP POF)
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 Advantage
Tough and durable than glass fiber
Since the modulus of these polymers is nearly two orders of magnitude than that of silica, even a 1mm diameter graded index POF is sufficiently flexible to be installed in conventional fiber cable routes

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 Compared with glass fibers core diameters of plastic fibers are 10 20 times larger, which allows a relaxation of connector tolerances without sacrificing optical coupling efficiencies Connectors, splices and transceivers can be fabricated with inexpensive technologies

Disadvantage
Greater optical attenuations than glass fiber

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Characteristics of PMMA and PFP Optical Fibers

Characteristics Core Dia. Cladding Dia. PMMA POF 0.4mm 1.0mm PFP POF 0.125 0.3 mm 0.25 0.60 mm

Numerical Aperture Attenuation

Bandwidth

0.25
150 dB/km at 650nm 2.5 Gb/s over 100m

0.2
60 -80 dB/km at 650 -1300 nm 2.5 Gb/s over 300m
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