The preparation of multimode glass- and liquid-core optical fibres

A preform technique for drawing cladded-glass and hollow fibres suitable for application to optical communications is described. The parameters which need to be controlled are discussed and the preparation of the preforms is described. The resulting fibres have a high geometric uniformity and a probe beam remains largely at the same angle to the axis after more than 10⁶ reflections at the core/cladding interface. Fibre attenuations of 150, 60 and 5.8 dB km^–1 have been obtained with commercial glasses, preforms made from a special melt at Sheffield University [5], and a commercial liquid, respectively. The fibre drawing process does not appear to introduce any additional impurities and heat treatment has produced a significant reduction of transmission loss in glass fibres.