Abstract
The emergence of optical communication in the 1970’s led to a search for a means to produce “waveguide quality silica”. Such silica is characterized by having extremely low loss resulting from the lack of a combination of optical absorption (Fe, Co, Ni, Cr, OH- contamination) and scattering (striations, bubbles, etc) as well as freedom from insoluble refractory oxide particles which induce low stress mechanical breaks in fiber. Vapor deposition techniques (OVD [1], MCVD [2], VAD [3]) were the early winners but the glass produced was expensive. So there ensued a search for other processing means. These included “double crucible” melts [4], microporous cylinders made by leaching of phase separated cast glass bodies [5], mechanical compaction [6], centrifugation [7] and sol-gel [8, 9]. Of these, only colloidal-gel bodies reached the stage of commercialization [10] and that after some time. However, there exists the belief that the processes initially developed for the most demanding application will find wider use in the future.
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MacChesney, J.B., Johnson, D.W. (2004). Monolithic Silica Glass Cylinders for Optical Fiber. In: Aegerter, M.A., Mennig, M. (eds) Sol-Gel Technologies for Glass Producers and Users. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88953-5_18
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-88953-5_18
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