LARGE-CORE, HIGH-BANDWIDTH POLYMER OPTICAL-FIBER FOR NEAR-INFRARED USE

High bandwidth (more than 500 MHz.km) graded-index polymer optical fiber (GI POF) for near infra-red use was successfully fabricated by using partially fluorinated acrylate polymer. Since only three carbon-hydrogen bonds exist in a monomer unit, an absorption loss due to the stretching vibration of the carbon-hydrogen bond was remarkably reduced compared with the conventional POF's. The attenuation of the GI POF at 780-nm wavelength was 135 dB/km, which is much lower than that of the PMMA core POF (800 dB/km). The fluorinated polymer-based GI POF is satisfying a significant segment of high-speed multimedia network applications.