How to classify optical fibers?

Optical fiber is a medium that carries a message from one end to another.It uses glass or plastic fibers as a transmission medium to transmit messages.optical fiber is in a period of rapid development, various kinds. It is mainly classified by the following methods:

1.Making material

(1)High purity quartz glass fiber.this material has low loss at wavelength 0.47db/km.The multimode fiber with germanium silicon as core and borosilicon as cladding has a minimum loss of 0.5db/km and a similar loss-spectrum curve.It is possible to obtain the best loss-spectrum curve by using a ternary compound material.

(2)Multicomponent glass fiber. Usually made with more conventional glass, the loss is also very low, such as Sodium-borosilica-te glass fiber with a minimum loss of 3.4db/km at l=0.84 micron.

(3)Plastic optical fiber. Compared with quartz fiber, it has the advantages of light weight, low cost, good softness and easy processing, but the loss is from r=0.63 micron to 100-200db/km.

2.Transmission mode

（1） Single mold fiber.the single-mode fiber core is only a few centimeters in diameter, and only tens of microns to 125 microns after cladding and coating.The core diameter is close to the wavelength.

（2） Multi-mode Fiber.the diameter of the multi-mode fiber is 50 microns, and the cladding and coating layers are 50 microns. The core diameter is much larger than the wavelength. According to the different radial distribution function of refractive index, the fiber is further divided into multi-mode step fiber, single-mode step fiber and multi-mode gradient fiber

3.Application

（1） Communication optical fiber.

（2） Non-communication fiber----Special optical fiberThere are low birefringent fiber, high birefringent fiber, coated fiber, liquid core fiber, laser fiber and infrared fiber ect.

4．Production Methods

（1） Chemical Vapor deposition (CVD) or modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD). Used to make high purity quartz glass fiber.

（2）Double crucible method or triple crucible method. Used to make multi-component glass fiber.