What are the main advantages of using polymer fibres in telecoms networks rather then traditional glass fibres?
IM: They’re mechanically a lot more flexible and they offer a lower system cost. They are also easy to connect and handle, and they don’t break. Traditionally, polymer fibres have only been used for short-haul applications, mainly because the material attenuation is quite high relative to glass, but they have a huge market in datacoms. The other advantage is the material we can use. There are very few ways to modify the properties of glass; you can add erbium or dope it a little bit with germanium, but it’s very hard to put things in. It’s a high temperature material so if you want to add an organic chromophore [a molecular group possessing high optical activity due to the presence of delocalized electrons], you’d kill it. The drawing process in polymers is relatively low temperature, so you can add things to polymers that give advanced functionality, for example, rare earths, organic chromophores or modulators. So what inspired you to develop microstructured polymer fibres? We are dev
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