How Are Optical Fibers Made?
Now that we know how fiber-optic systems work and why they are useful — how do they make them? Optical fibers are made of extremely pure optical glass. We think of a glass window as transparent, but the thicker the glass gets, the less transparent it becomes due to impurities in the glass. However, the glass in an optical fiber has far fewer impurities than window-pane glass. One company’s description of the quality of glass is as follows: If you were on top of an ocean that is miles of solid core optical fiber glass, you could see the bottom clearly. Making optical fibers requires the following steps: • Making a preform glass cylinder • Drawing the fibers from the preform • Testing the fibers Making the Preform Blank The glass for the preform is made by a process called modified chemical vapor deposition (MCVD).
