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Fiber Materials
• Materials that satisfy these requirementsare
glasses and plastic
Fiber Material • Majority of fibers are made ofglass consisting
of either silica orsilicate.
• Plastic fibers are less widely used becauseof
their higher attenuation
• Plastic fibers are used for short distance
applications (several hundred meters) and
abusiveenvironments
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Fiber Materials
• Requirements for optical fibermaterial
– It must be possible to make long thin,flexible
fibers from the material
– Material must be transparent at a particular
optical wave length in order for fiber to guide light
efficiently
– Physically compatible materials that haveslightly
different refractive indices for core and cladding
must be available

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GlassFiber
• Glass is made by fusing mixture of metal
oxides, sulfides, or selenides. The resulting
material is a randomly connected molecular
network rather a well defined structure as
found in crystallinematerials
• A consequence of this random order isglass
does not have a well defined melting point
• When glass is heated , it gradually beginsto
soften until it becomes a viscous liquid
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GlassFiber
• Optical fiber are made from oxide glasses and
most popular is silica (SiO2) which has
refractive index of 1.458 at 850nm.
• To produce two similar materials with slightly
different refraction indices for core and
cladding, either fluorine or other oxides
(dopants) are added to silica
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• Since the fiber cladding must have a lower index • silica (SiO2) n=1.458
than the core, examples of glass fiber compositions
are
Germanium oxide
GeO2-SiO2 core; SiO2 cladding
P2O5-SiO2core; SiO2 cladding
Phosphorus pentoxide
SiO2 core; B2O3-SiO2 cladding
GeO2 – B2O3-SiO2 core; B2O3-SiO2 cladding
Fluorine Boron trioxide
• Sand is the principle raw material for silica
• Glass composed of pure silica is referred to as either silica
glass, fused glass, or vitreous silica. (transparent )
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Active Glass Fibers
•Incorporating rare-earth elements (atomic number 57-71) into a normally passive
glass gives the resulting material new optical and magnetic properties allow the
material to perform amplification, attenuation, and phase retardation on the light
passing through it .
•Doping can be carried out using silica, tellurite and halide glasses.
•Two commonly used materials for fiber lasers are erbium and neodyium
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Fiber materials
Glass fiber features:
Plastic Optical Fibers (POF)
– Advantages: low attenuation, cheap and abundant raw material • Growing demand for delivering high-speed services to workstations has
(mostly sand) led the developers to create high bandwidth graded index
– Disadvantages: high installation cost, complexity, requires skilled polymer(plastic) optical fibers (POF)
technicians, inflexible, easy-to-break • The core of this fibers are Poly(ethyl methacrylate) or a perfluorinated
polymer these fibers are referred as PMMA POF and PF POF
• Have greater optical signal attenuations than glass fiber, they tough and
durable
• Core diameter is 10-20 times larger

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Plastic Optical Fiber

• Advantages:
– Simpler and less expensive components
– Lighter weight
– greater flexibility and ease in handling and
– Lower installation cost
• Disadvantages:
– High attenuation
– Limited production

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Fiber Fabrication
• Two basic techniques
– Vapor-phase oxidation process
• Outside vapor phase oxidation
• Vapor phase axial deposition
• Modified chemical vapor deposition
– Direct-melt methods

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Fiber Materials (Requirement)

• Requirements for optical fiber material
– It must be possible to make long thin, flexible fibers from the
material
FIBER FABRICATION
– Material must be transparent at a particular optical wave
length in order for fiber to guide light efficiently

– Physically compatible materials that have slightly different

refractive indices for core and cladding must be available

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Preform Generation Techniques

FIBER FABRICATION STEPS:
• The soot (layer of SiO2 particles is called soot) for the core material is
made by mixing three gases: SiCl4, GeCl4 and O2 through flame
 Thefiber fabrication process is a two-step process hydrolysis or chemical vapor deposition (CVD).
which involves:
SiCl4  2 H2O  SiO2  4 HCl
1. Making the preform GeCl4  2H2O GeO2  4 HCl
2. Drawing process SiCl4  O2  SiO2  2 Cl2
GeCl4 +O2  GeO2  2 Cl2
 ‘Preform’ is a rod of glass made by vapor deposition
process. It consists of both the core and cladding • The doping level is controlled by changing the amount of GeCl4 gas
added to the mixture.
materials. • Manufacturers deposit the soot on the surface of a glass substrate
(mandrel) or inside a hollow tube by one of the following methods:
 Thepreform is drawn into fibers using the fiber – Modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD)
drawing process. – Plasma enhanced MCVD(PMCVD)

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Chemical vapor deposition (CVD)

Fabrication Steps • Chemicals are mixed in
vapour phase and react
inside a rotating glass tube
• Producing a pure glass. • Fine particles of solid
germano or phosphoro
• Converting it into the required glass silicate glass deposit on
composition for the core-cladding the inside of the tube.
structure, that is, the preform. • A travelling burner
• Preform is a rod of glass made by moving along the tube
deposition process. stimulates a chemical
reaction and also fuses the
• The preform has the same structure particles into glass on the
as the final optical fiber. inner wall of the tube.
• The fiber is drawn from preform at • Next the tube is heated to
the correct diameter (125 µm) 2000 C and collapses into
a “preform”
maintaining the same refractive
index profile. • The preform is then put
into a furnace and is
drawn into fibre.
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O utsi de Vapor -Phase O xi dati on (OVPO):
( Exte r nal CVD)
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M odi fie d C h e mic a l Vapor D e p ositio n
(MCVD) : (Inte r nal CVD)
 The process shown in figure is widely adopted
to produce ve r y l ow-l oss gr ade d-i n de x
fibers.
 The gl a ss va p or par ti cl e s, ar i si ng from the
re ac ti on of t h e c on s ti t ue nt me tal hal i de
g a s e s a n d oxyge n, fl ow t h r oug h t h e i n si de
of a re vol vi ng si l i c a tube .
 As the SiO 2 particles are deposited, they are
sintered to a clear glass layer by an
Oxyhydrogen torch which travels back and
forth along the tube.
 Whe n th e d e s i r e d t h i c k n e s s of gl a s s has
b e e n d e p osi te d, t h e vapor flow is s h ut off
a n d t h e t ub e i s h e a t e d strongl y to c a us e
to c ol l apse i nto a sol i d rod pre for m.
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 The fiber that is subsequently drawn from
this preform rod will have a core that consists
of the vapor-deposited material and a
cladding that consists of the original silica
tube.
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Plasma enhanced MCVD (PMCVD)
• It is nearly identical to MCVD.
• The main difference is the stimulation of oxide
formation by isothermal plasma in a
microwave cavity (3-5 MHz) at low pressure,
which surrounds the silica tube.
• Volatile reactants supplied to the tube react within
the microwave cavity. By controlling the
microwave cavity, the reaction zone is moved
backward and forward.
• With this technique, very thin-layer deposition is
possible. Hence in a single preform we can have
up to 2,000 layers, and a good graded-index
profile can be obtained.
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Fiber Drawing and Coating
• The preform obtained by any
one method is placed
vertically on a drawing tower.
• The lower end of the preform
is heated to melting, and the
fiber is drawn by stretching.
• The thickness of fiber is
controlled by the drawing
rate.
• As the material leaves the
preform, a mechanical feeder
ensures a continuous flow of
material.
• Any lag or overpressure
would cause inconsistencies
in the flow and therefore in
the diameter of the fiber.
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FIBER CABLES
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Fiber Cables
There are two basic types of fiber-optic cable
◦ The difference is whether the fiber is free to move inside
a tube with a diameter much larger than the fiber or is
inside a relatively tight-fitting jacket
They are referred to as loose-tube and tight-
buffer cables.
Both methods of construction have advantages
◦ Loose-tube cables—all the stress of cable pulling is taken
up by the cable’s strength members and the fiber is free
to expand and contract with temperature
◦ Tight-buffer cables are cheaper and generally easier to
use
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Tight Buffered Fiber Cable Module:

Fiber Optic Cable Construction

33 (a) Tight buffered fiber optic cable. (b) Loose-tube fiber optic cable. (c) Ribbon fiber optic cable 35

Specialty Optical Fibers

Loose Buffered Fiber Cable Module:

Three types of PMF’s: (a) Panda style, (b) Photonic crystal fibers: (a) Solid core
Elliptical -clad and (c) Bow-tie structure and (b) hollow core
structure

Different PCF structures: (a) Honeycomb, (b) Bragg hollow core, (c) Hexagonal
34 lattice solid- core, (d) Large hollow core hexagonal 36
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• Silicon tetrachloride or tetrachlorosilane=SiCl4 =Silicon tetrachloride

or tetrachlorosilane is the inorganic compound with the formula SiCl4.
It is a colourless volatile liquid that fumes in air. It is used to produce
high purity silicon and silica for commercial applications.
• Germanium tetrachloride= GeCl4 = Germanium tetrachloride is a
colourless, fuming liquid with a peculiar, acidic odour. It is used as an
intermediate in the production of purified germanium metal. In
recent years, GeCl4 usage has increased substantially due to its use as
a reagent for fiber optic production.
• GERMANIUM DIOXIDE-GeO2

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