Nobuyuki Tomihashi

Plastic optical fibers

Characteristics of plastic optical fibers (POF)s, i.e., handling ease because of their good ductility, splicing ease to each other and to light sources because of their large fiber diameter and high numerical aperture, processability, and high flexibility notwithstanding their larger fiber diameters, have attracted much attention. They are expected to be applied as a short distance optical signal transmission medium for certain kinds of computer-toterminal data links such as in office automation systems. Polymers for POF application should be as transparent as possible and therefore they should be low in scattering loss, and their refractive index should be controllable to fabricated fiber structures. In this paper, POF optical transparency, light scattering, optical bandwidth, and refractive index control are discussed in detail along with polymer loss limit