Low-Loss Infrared Fibers.
Abstract
This final report describes research on low-loss fiber waveguides for use in future long-distance fiber links. The goal of the program is to develop non-oxide-containing fibers with losses as low as 10 to the minus 3rd power dB/km. This work is part of an overall technology assessment to determine the feasibility of fabricating such ultra-low-loss optical fibers. The approach being used to develop these very transparent waveguides is to fabricate fiber from IR transmitting crystalline materials. The materials studied were the alkali and thallium halides. We found that we could not successfully apply our extrusion technology, developed for the thallium halides, to fabricate alkali halide fibers. Extruded KC1 or CsI fibers, for example, always had poor surface quality due to surface cracks (fish-scale appearance). We therefore abandoned extrusion methods for the alkali halides in favor of other fiber fabrication techniques. An alternative technique used was single crystal (SC) fiber growth. SC fibers represent a potentially ideal waveguide because they are free from mechanical defects (such as strain fields associated with grain boundaries in extruded polycrystalline fibers) and thus should have less scattering losses than polycrystalline waveguides. To make SC fibers we used an inverted Czochralski growth technique and applied the method to KC1. By the end of the program we had not yet produced any SC KC1 fiber, but we expect to do so shortly. (Author)
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1980
- Accession Number
- ADA093151
Entities
People
- James A. Harrington
Organizations
- HRL Laboratories