Characteristics of Polycrystalline Silver Halide Fiber for Transmitting CO_2 Laser

The silver halide was purified by melting at high vacuum, zone melting with reactiveatmosphere and crystal growing in quartz ampoule with high vacuum. The silver halide fibers weremade by hot extrusion. The effects of the purification of silver halide and its fiber preparationmethod on transmission loss were studied. Experiment results show that the increase of the numberof times of the starting material purification will cause the decrease of absorption coefficient of silverhalide preform. A high quality preform was obtained by a reasonable technology. The absorptioncoefficient of the purified silver halide preform measured by CO_2 laser calorimeter is less than5×10~-4cm~-l. The transmission loss of the silver halide fiber is 0.3~0.5dB/m when measured byCO_2 laser beam at 10.6μm. Its output power of transmitting CO_2 laser beam is more than 20Win the fiber of 1.0mm diameter and l.64m length.