Fabrication And Optical Properties Study Of Plastic Fibers For Optical Amplifier

The plastic optical fiber (POF) has been developed since1960s, but limited byits large optical loss. In the twenty-first century, with the development of Internetand multimedia technology, more and more people are pursuing high quality of lifeand novel technology. The speed and capacity of data interaction increasesdramatically, the traditional twisted pair or coaxial cable has been unable to meetthe requirements. Plastic optical fiber, which has good flexibility, low loss, and highbandwidth, is the ideal medium for short range data communication. However, theavailable length of plastic optical fiber is less than100meter, because the opticalattenuation of PMMA fiber is about100dB/km. We will solve this problem withinexpensive plastic optical fiber amplifier (POFA). The conjugated polymer, which isalso called organic semiconductor, can be excited both with optical light and electric.It has low fluorescence lifetime and high quantum efficiency, so we can achievelasing output and optical signal amplification with the doped plastic optical fiber. Inthis article, we fabricate the CN-PPV doped POF and study its fluorescence propertyand simulated its gain properties as a fiber amplifier.1) Plastic optical fiber using PMMA as fiber core’s material has been fabricated.The experimental parameters, such as polymerization temperature, polymerizationtime, contents of initiator and chain transfer agent were optimized. The fiber performwithout small bubble were fabricated and PMMA plastic fibers were pulled with thetemperature between150and160℃.2) The fluorescence properties of the conjugated polymer CN-PPV doped POFwere studied. The emission spectra and absorption spectra of CN-PPV have beenmeasured. We know the maximum emission cross section of CN-PPV is1.7x10-20m2.The emission spectrums of CN-PPV doped plastic optical fiber depend on pump lighttraveling distance have been tested with side illumination. The result tells us thefluorescence spectra have the trend moving to the long wavelength. The maximumshift distance of peak position is12nm.3) The optical amplifier property of CN-PPV doped plastic optical fiber is simulated theoretically. We analyzed the signal gain depend on pump power of twoPOFA doped with different quantity CN-PPV bye solving the rate equations and lightpropagation equations. The biggest signal gain is25dB with a POFA doped with1ppm CN-PPV. For a50cm POFA, when the doped concentration is0.2ppm, has lightamplify ability. These results can help us have a good knowledge of POFA doped withCN-PPV.