Microsoft Technology Licensing, LLC

Gilberto Brambilla

Paolo Costa

Hitesh Ballani

Kai Shi

Richard James Baca

A method of fabricating a graded-index polymer optical fibre comprises preparing a cladding composition, the cladding composition comprising either a mixture of a cladding polymer and a dopant or a mixture of a cladding polymer precursor and a dopant; forming cladding from the cladding composition around a core, the core comprising a core polymer; and causing diffusion of the dopant into the core such that the dopant has a continuous concentration gradient, according to which concentration gradient the concentration of the dopant increases with radial distance from a centre of the core. The dopant is a compound having a refractive index which is lower than a refractive index of the core polymer. By distributing the dopant such that the dopant concentration is lowest at the centre of the core, the optical attenuation of the graded-index polymer optical fibre may be reduced. Also provided is a graded-index polymer optical fibre obtainable by the method.

Graded-index polymer optical fibre and the fabrication thereof

A method of fabricating a multi-core polymer optical fibre comprises arranging optical fibre preforms in a stack, the optical fibre preforms each comprising a polymer core and polymer cladding surrounding the polymer core; and drawing and bonding the stack to form the multi-core polymer optical fibre. Any contaminants or impurities which collect on outer surfaces of the preforms may be confined to boundaries between the preforms, which may avoid attenuation of signals passed through the cores while at the same time reducing crosstalk between cores of the final manufactured fibre. Also provided is a multi-core polymer optical fibre obtainable by the method.

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Southampton, United Kingdom

Gilberto Brambilla