MANUFACTURING METHODS FOR MULTI STEP INDEX PLASTIC OPTICAL FIBER MATERIALS

Abstract Plastic optical fibres (POF) are often used in telecommunication, consumer electronics and automotive applications. Measuring and control devices used for POF are already standardised procedures. To meet the requirements of the IEEE 1394 standard for data transfer rates up to 800Mbps requires increasingly improved performance of POF. POFs which offer high bandwidth, total electromagnetic immunity and simple handling are considered as an alternative to noisy copper cables (cat 5) and high performance glass optic fibres for of a data highway. The market requires a simple and inexpensive alternative that would not be a technical overkill. The target of the study carried out in the Institute of Fibre Materials Science at Tampere University of Technology was to evaluate manufacturing methods which would allow this. This is a summary article of the results of manufacturing step index and multi-step index POF by preform manufacturing followed by fibre drawing as well as the extrusion method.